To Err Is Human
by InnovAsians
Summary: They call Wraeclast the continent of the damned. For the Templar, "damned" just meant that God needed to be brought to its shores.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes: This is my first writing attempt so I hope it goes well and that you enjoy it. I'll be trying to keep as close to the lore of the game as possible though I will be taking some artistic liberties at some points. If you're wondering I will be getting my lore mainly from this site:** **History_of_Wraeclast** **though that doesn't mean I won't be looking into other sources. If this chapter seems short that's probably because it's meant to be a simple introduction for the main characters. I hope you enjoy.**

Summary: They call Wraeclast the continent of the damned. For the Templar, "damned" just meant that God needed to be brought to its shores.

* * *

Drip. Drip. Drip. The raid plopped to the floor with a wet sopping sound. The ship tossed and turned as the waves beat against the hull. A weak, flickering torch hung next to the doorway; it splashed the silhouettes of exiles across the walls of the prison hold. to the left of the only entry way. The prison hold; a cavernous expanse packed with exiles both men and women alike.

The heavy door creaked open.

Slowly, a man clad in dulled armor clanked into the prison hold and drew in a deep, strong breath.

Few awoke, even fewer bothered to open their eyes, only a handful raised their eyes to meet the prison guard's glare, and only one struggled to his feet and leveled his eyes at him.

" **EXILES, RISE!"** The deep voice resonated across every nook and cranny of the hold.

"Now, your new home's looming on the horizon, and while I personally don't care if we simply had you degenerates executed by the blade and tossed to the waves, I, unlike any of you, am a man bound to his word. So it's time to move all of you to the upper deck where we're preparing for your disembarkment." The captain's words came out slow and condescending.

More guards filed into the prison hold, their armor clanking and their eyes glowering at the exiles. Each guard marched to and stood patiently by their allotted set of prisoners, their weapons drawn and ready to strike down the dissident.

" **EXILES TO THE UPPER DECK!"**

The guards began grabbing the groggy exiles and shoving them towards the door, prodding them with their blades in an effort to get them moving.

* * *

The exiles looked at the looming coastline of Wraeclast, an unforgiving and abandoned continent, filled with the undead and other monstrosities.

"I can't fucking wait for these exiles to drown so we can sail back home." One of the guards grumbled out. The captain put on a grim look and placed his gauntlet covered hand on the guard's shoulder.

"Theopolis, its women, drinks, and food waits for all good men to return." The captain then let out a heavy sigh, slow and deep, as he looked back towards his home in Oriath. "We finish this and we're off for the next few weeks while some other poor guards get the pleasure of bringing in whatever poor bastards get exiled next."

The exiles were hoarded towards the starboard side of the ship, the guards behind them, weapons and shields still drawn and held firmly.

"Time to disembark exiles. It's either sink or swim" a small chuckle escaped his lips, "and trust me when I say that sinking is the more favorable option."

The man who seemed so eager to stand earlier turned to look at the rolling waves, then raised his eyes towards the dark coastline of the continent he knew to be Wraeclast. His face turned stern and steady as he contemplated his future.

 _-Swim is the only option I can consider here. My God is watching me now. Judging me with his gaze-_

The man thought as he returned his eyes to the exiles surrounding him, six of them stood out from amongst the exiled crowd.

A massive giant of a man, his frame towering over all the others and his torso covered in a Karui tattoo. His arms were thick like the elder oak trees that populated the outer forest surrounding Theopolis.

A much smaller man was watching with darkened eyes from the back of the crowd. His form was thin and willowy. Yet the man could see the danger present in his form. It was clear from the way he held himself, his body coiled like a spring, or more accurately a dagger waiting in the dark to bury itself in an unsuspecting fools chest.

Near the front of the crowd with him, though a little further to his right, was a woman, clad in ornate clothing. The man furrowed his brow in confusion as he realized what her garments indicated; this woman belonged to one of the wealthy families in Theopolis.

– _What exactly is one of noble birth doing here?-_ The man thought as he continued his scan of the crowd.

Another man, larger than the second but not nearly as large as the first, he was garbed in the clothing of a fencer. His face was set in a vicious smirk, a look that defied all logic, as though he was looking forward to the challenge of facing the rolling waves and the threats on Wraeclast.

A woman with short blonde seemed to be doing the same as himself. Observing the crowd. Her eyes seems to squint as she eyed each man and woman as though she were checking their worth, or perhaps she was checking whether or not they were threats to her person. Her eyes met his and she raised a single eyebrow.

Finally, a girl, far younger than anyone else in the assorted crowd. The man wracked his brain trying to figure out what crime a child could commit to land themselves in such dire straits; though who could understand the corrupt nobles of Theopolis and their mad designs.

The man looked upon himself, his body was taut with firm muscles, scars lined his body, though covered by the worthless rags that were given to him by the church elders as they stripped him of his status and authority. His skin was tan from his days spent training and fighting under the blistering sun. His hair had greyed earlier than most due to the stress of constant battle and his face seemed aged beyond his days.

He stared at his hands, calloused and roughened by his days spent forging his weapon and armor now, which now reminded him of his days as a Templar. His days amongst his brothers. His days spent with those…tools, all of whom had no purpose now. He alone knew his purpose and the path God had set out before him. He alone knew what his knew purpose was.

"Arrrgghhhhh!" Some exiles screamed as they either plunged into the icy waters of their own volition or were shoved over the edge of the ship. The Templar took a few steps back and rushed towards the edge of the ship, leaped into the icy waters below, and began his swim towards the shoreline.

* * *

* _Cough* *Cough*_

The Templar groggily opened his eyes as he spat the salty sea water out of his lungs and onto the sand before him.

"…God bless…I actually made it to shore." For all the faith he had in his God, the Templar had still doubted whether he would make it to the sandy, corpse ridden beach.

Hacking and coughing, he shoved his arms into the ground and shoved himself up onto his feet.

"Hehehe…seems like your finally awake…I was waiting a while ya know."

The Templar shifted his gaze to a man sitting languidly to his right.

"If you happen to be wondering where the other exiles are…'' The man pointed towards the ocean "It's clear that most chose the captain's…gracious advice. Ah ha ha ha…" The man's laughter was weak and petered out.

"The ones who did make it…They took off already. Call me crazy but I assume their heading for the big wooden walls further east along the shoreline." The Templar eyed the dead bodies surrounding them, then trailed his eyes further eastwards, towards a massive, looming wall in the distance.

"Look…just…snap out of whatever shit your thinking of and pick up what's next to ya."

Buried in the sand was a mace, complete with rotting wood handle and red rusted steel rivets installed at the head.

"Just help me up and let's get going. The rest didn't feel like waiting and now that you're awake I'd like to head out as well." The man raised a hand towards the Templar, tired grin on his face.

Reaching out and grabbing his hand, the Templar lifted his new…compatriot to his feet as he eyed him warily. "If the others didn't wait…why did you? You don't pass off as self-sacrificing in any manner."

"They left your ass because you were passed out. They left my ass because I was too weak to even get up after the beating the waves gave me." He staggered to his feet and heavily sighed. "Don't mistaken me as some humanitarian now. Pure coincidence has joined us together."

"I…appreciate honesty I suppose. Why give me the weapon in lieu of taking it for yourself? The Templar looked the man over and saw his emaciated form. _–How did he even make it to shore looking like this?-_

"Ha..hahaha…look at me, what the hell would I do with mace when I can't even get up on my own?" Lips twisting into a somber smile, he leveled a steady gaze at the Templar.

"Well thank you. Are you prepared to head towards the walls, whoever resides within them, and the exiles?" The Templar began to reposition his rags so as to cover his lower body. He was sure to find more to cover the rest of him. His decency was priority.

"There was another though she split off from the others. A girl, young at that. Amazing she even made it to shore. Headed a bit inland towards the cliffs."

"I thought you said that you were no humanitarian?" His eyebrows furrowed, as he remember the visage of the girl he took notice of earlier on the ship.

"No, but if she's confident enough to head out on her own she's either skilled at surviving horrifying shit like this or she's just that moronic. Either way we don't lose much. Just some time…and possibly our lives hahaha." His face began to show more life now, his eyes determined and his shoulders squared.

The Templar had spent most of his life fighting for his brothers in the church, fighting to protect the people of the city, fighting for his God. Saving one girl, the church would call him a fool for wasting time. Wasting resources. He should head towards the walls, find the other exiles, and establish a plan of action. After all, the church Elders would cry in disdain, what was the life of one girl compared to a mission ordained by God himself?

He made up his mind almost instantly after these thoughts.

"How far north?"

The man smirked and let out a raucous laughter. "Ahhahaha! I suggest we head north-northeast for only a dozen minutes. At that point we'll be practically humping the cliffside so if we don't run into her there we can just head towards the wall."

"Let's head off then. Keep your eyes open for any undead corpses. I'm not a particular fan of surprises."

"Well let's hope the dead stay dead in the first place. My ears are still a bit water logged and my muscles feel like their being weighed down by anchors."

The Templar let a weak smile form on his lips. _–To be honest I'm not much better right now. I can still feel the beating the waves gave me on my journey here-_

"My name is Damase." The Templar extended his hand in a gesture of...acquaintanceship. Not friendship, no, it was a bit early for that. But acquaintanceship was fine.

"And mine is Morien." _-This could work-_ , Morien thought, _-this could really work-_.

They both turned towards the cliffs.

The Templar took the lead position.

Then, all hell broke loose behind him.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Chapter two. A bit longer than the last chapter with more going on. After writing this chapter I was a bit disappointed with how it came out, but overall still happy with it. I still have a lot to learn when it comes to showing instead of telling. Either way I hope you enjoy.**

The first sign of trouble should have been the dead bodies around them. Everyone in Oriath knew of Wraeclast and its undead population. Of course, the brain, with all of its sensitive parts, tends to require a generous amount of time to reach full functionality after taking a beating.

Cold, clammy hands gripped Morien's shoulders as a set of blackened, decayed teeth sunk deep into his neck.

Morien flung his torso to the side as his hands leaped to the undead's skull, trying his best to wrench the deathly jaws off of his neck.

He had been branded once before, back in Oriath while in prison, but the fire pouring down his neck terrified him in a way he had never felt before. He feared the pain of the branding sure, but he knew he would live through it. He had been terrified when he flung himself into the unforgiving waters, but even then he believed he would survive. But now however, the visceral sensation of his blood pouring down his neck left him no doubts as to his fate.

Death.

Death is all that waited for him now.

Damase lunged at the undead, swinging his ramshackle mace at its decaying face. His blow landed true and the aberration's head exploded in a fury storm of gore. The rest of the body collapsed onto the sand, limbs still pantomiming their last, deathly moments as the undead faded into its final rest.

"Morien!" Damase dropped the mace, hands racing to stem the flowing crimson river that gushed from Morien's neck. "I...I..." He stumbled over his words. Even as a Templar in Oriath he was never good at comforting those close to death. He knew he shouldn't have been so careless. He knew that this continent was filled with danger. He knew all of this and yet...he cursed himself for slipping.

Morien's eyes looked upward and on into the sky. He knew that he was weak. He knew that Wraeclast was dangerous in ways that no man could prepare himself for. He knew that his chances of survival were minuscule the moment his feet touched the wet wood of the ship. He knew all of this and yet...he believed that he could have made it. Here he was though, his first and only ally in life with the grim expression of a man witnessing death happen right before his eyes.

A heavy breath escaped Damase's throat and his eyes locked onto Morien's own.

"I'm sorry."

His thoughts went to the past, to his old allies and his old friends. He had held more than one dying comrade in his life but that made it no easier to handle.

 _-Darkly ironic how death, of all things, can turn acquaintances into friends so fast...-_

Life had never been...no...it had been plenty fair, he just made wrong decisions, the wrong choices. Life gave him every opportunity to step in the right direction but he never took it. The drugs. The alcohol. The deaths. He let out a dark chuckle in his mind.

 _-_ _At least I stayed true to my course,_ _never wavering in my decadence..._ _-_

Morien felt the cold creeping throughout his body. If he would die here on this beach of the damned, he wanted to make sure that he stayed dead. Cold fingers reached out to the rotten wood, grasped, and shakily brought it to its owner.

The Damase's gray eyes closed as his fingers wrapped around the mace handle. He had done things like this before. Back during the Cleansing. He rose to his feet, took a strong, deep breath, and looked his dying companion in the eyes.

The mace whistled, bone crunched under rusted steel, and blood splattered across the sands.

"May God help you find rest." His words came out tired and low.

 _-The cliffs huh...well that was the plan originally. No reason to make a new one. Though before I leave...-_

He straightened his shoulders, looked in a circle around him for more corpses, and began to bury the corpse in the sand of the beach.

 _-No gravestone, no casket, but at least he has a Templar of God to say him his goodbyes-_

His bitter thoughts made his face morbid. Gathering himself together he recited the passages he had been taught as a Templar in training.

"I sincerely hope its not every single corpse that can reanimate." He rubbed his shoulders and began his trek to the cliffs.

* * *

 _****Hours earlier on the beach****_

"Shit...Not a lot of us made it huh." A drenched figure looked around him at the group gathered on the beach.

 _-So we have a giant man, a silent man, a sleeping man, a man that looks like he shouldn't have made it here, a spoiled sow, a dyke, and a fucking child...great-_

"Look lets just try and get our bearings first before we go out and do anything stupid." Eyes turned to the short haired blonde. The giant snorted in derision.

"This is Wraeclast, the continent of the damned. Do you really need anymore bearings woman?"

"Condescension doesn't exactly get us anywhere and maybe if you had an equal balance of brain and brawn you would know Wraeclast is incredibly dangerous and working together nets us the highest chances of survival." The well dressed, when compared to those around her, woman narrowed her eyes at the brute.

Another one of the gathered let out a viscous laugh. His lips thinned into a sneer.

"Oh so the noble-blood thinks her opinion here matters. This isn't a mansion soirée you know. Most people die here and are never heard from again. The challenge is far beyond whatever political games you were taught to handle."

The noble girl glared at the duelist. "Oh, and I'm sure that you've lived through plenty of hardship haven't you? You look like one of those pompous duelists trained at the Korvich's Fencing Academy. I'm sure that your status outweighs your skill you lanky, garrulous..."

" **SILENCE!"** The group jumped at the roaring voice that broke the tireless arguing. **"** I grow tired of this talking. I head to the wooden walls eastward. If you want a plan, there you go. Follow me eastward to the walls...or don't, I think I would prefer that."

The short haired blonde sighed tiredly. "While I doubt he put any serious thought into this, I believe the brute has a point. Walls tend to signify some level of civilization. How dangerous shouldn't matter much as long as we keep our wits about for danger."

"Kerr."

"You alright there or do you need something for your throat?"

Kerr growled and narrowed his eyes. His nostrils flared in anger as he squared his shoulders and stood straighter up. "It's my birth-name woman. Learn to use it."

"Well Kerr, you can call me by mine then, Kacela." Kacela smirked and rapped one fist against Kerr's oak tree chest.

The noble birth nodded at Kacela and huffed at the others. "We all just throwing our names out then? Convenient I suppose. Mine is Odelia"

"God, I can't believe you shits think this will help any bit. Mine is Enzo."

"Morien..." A voice weakly coughed out.

Kacela raised an eyebrow at him. "You alright there?" She gave him a look over; heavy breaths, bowed head, and slumped shoulders. This man was more than tired, he was weak.

"I'm fine...just need...time to rest" His words came out ragged and broken.

Enzo sneered and scoffed at him. "We have no time to wait. If he can't keep up, abandon him."

"Aren't you the humanitarian. He just needs some time to rest. Besides the one beside him could wake up soon as well." Kacela glared at him and knelt beside the passed out man. He was the one observing the other exiles on the ship. Seemed a bit...determined. What for she had no clue but overly-determined is better that being under-determined was her rule of thumb.

"Hate to break it to you but Kerr over there started walking already." Odelia stared at the mountainous man's back, then she looked back at the others. "Look...I feel bad for saying this, but I'm heading to those walls as well."

"Well fuck, guess I was right. Time to leave." A disgusting smirk reached his face as he jogged towards the walls.

Kacela growled as she stared at Enzo's back. She had met men like that before; arrogant, probably talented enough to back up some of his words, but still an asshole.

"Just go on. I can wait for the sleeper to wake up."

"...You know I'm not going to try and argue against that right?"

"Isn't that a form of arguing?" He cracked a weak grin at her.

"Ha ha, yeah I guess huh. Good luck." Kacela eyed rotten wood sticking out from the sand. "Take this. Probably not much help but it's something." She extended the gnarled mace and gave him a weak smile. "Look on the bright side, if sleepy over there turns out to be an asshole, you can quiet him down pretty easily."

"He...He. Guess you're right." His eyes wandered to the final two members of the group. "You got any names? Didn't hear either of you speak up during our little icebreaker moment."

"Call me Ahimoth." The lanky man nodded and began walking off towards the others.

"..." The young girl stared into the distance and stalked towards the cliffs.

"Guess they're not really talkative huh."

"Yeah...alright well you head off. I'll be fine until the sleeper wakes back up. Good luck. Get a weapon if you can."

"Good luck to you too." Her eyes trailed towards the east. She spied a rotted bow near a corpse in the distance. If she wanted to survive, she needed to get something to protect herself.

The kid seemed...off. Her instincts rarely lied to her and she knew the stories of...strange children. Children born with no tears. Children who were always the center of disaster. Children whispered to be touched by the Gods under the deep. Theopolis' official stance on the issue was that they didn't exist and that any rumors of these kinds of children were unfounded. After all Theopolis was supposed to be God's own city so how could any child be an unspoken. Kacela knew better though; those children did exist.

It seemed that she now knew where they ended up.

* * *

*Squilch*...*Squilch*...*Squilch*

A young girl walked along the wet sands, she eyed the corpses around her as some began to stir awake and stumble towards her. Most of them were decayed enough to the point where a speedy shuffle was the fastest they move.

She had been searching for a specific tool for a while now. She knew that there had to be one on this beach here somewhere.

"Out of the millions of exiles you would think there would be sorcerer or mage that died here." A grumble left her lips and she sighed. The groaning was getting annoying, the sand was coarse, and her clothes were cold and wet.

A wide grin came graced her lips as she spied a piece of nondescript oak being gripped in the hands of a waterlogged corpse. "Ahhh well speak of the devil and he shall appear..." She stalked to the corpse, taking care to look for any signs of movement.

"Ahhh...here we go." As her fingers wrapped around elder oak, she welled up her strength and let it flow from her core, to her arms, and finally into the wooden stick. She focused her mind and let the arcane power flow over and out of her pores, covering her flesh in a wispy, transparent glow.

"Aaughhhhhggh..." Another undead stumbled towards her from several paces away. She smirked and drew the wand up, breathing in and taking steady aim.

 ***** **Krack** ***** The wand exploded in light for just a moment as an opaque bolt of energy escaped from the tip. The undead stumbled backwards and fell onto it's back as the bolt smashed its chest in; blood exploded out of the wound and bone splintered into tiny shards. The jaws snapped angrily though the body remained still.

"Hmmmm...must have shattered the spine. Ahhhh...not enough power to blow it apart I see." She flicked her wrist, let anger and wrath fill her heart, and focused on the fire in her soul.

 ***Fwoosh*** The body went ablaze, lighting up the surrounding area.

"Auuuughhh..." More bodies began to stir at the commotion.

 _-Hmmm...the old tales speak of witches that had the power to control the undead. Possibly useful, but I was never one for mindless minions-_ She smirked as she let more power flow through her, preparing for the ensuing conflict.

In the distance she saw a man bashing bodies aside with a rotten mace as he drew nearer towards...her?

 _-Looks like he finally woke up, though the other man isn't there with him. Either he was murdered after the other man awoke or the undead ate him-_

 ***Krack* *Fwoosh***

 ***Krack* *Fwoosh***

 ***Krack* *Fwoosh***

She mindlessly sent out bolts of energy, making sure to burn the bodies as they fell. She kept her focus on the man approaching her. Undead were about as dangerous as falling bookshelves, let one fall on you and you were probably going to get hurt, but otherwise slow and easy to see coming.

Humans, however, were always dangerous.

* * *

"Haaaa!" The man smashed another skull, stepped forwards while ducking under grabbing arms, and spun the mace into the snapping jaws of another undead.

 ***Snap*** The head of the mace went flying off into the sand with a muffled thud.

Damase sighed as he looked for another weapon. Some of the dead were still clutching their weapons as they laid in the sands. He narrowed his eyes and tore another mace out the hands of a mangled corpse. As he looked onward towards the cliffs, he saw flashes of light and heard the whispers of explosions.

 _-...I'll sacrifice my right arm if that has nothing to do with the girl-_

Raising his mace, he took off towards the flashes of light, crushing the dead who stood in his way.

* * *

He came across a grizzly scene; bodies blasted apart with their remains charred beyond recognition, a young girl stood in the midst of them with her arm raised and her chest , a thin stick pointed towards him in a threatening manner.

The witch raised an eyebrow, a bead of sweat trailed down her forehead, and leveled her wand at his chest. "Please, keep your distance." She gestured to the carnage surrounding her. A clear indication of what he would face should he get too close.

"Lower the wand. I was the passed out man on the beach earlier." His heart thudded in his chest as he stared at girl. A girl this young, exiled to Wraeclast by the Church of Theopolis, wielding a wand, with burned bodies around her...He'd bite one of those undead himself if this girl wasn't a witch. "I heard you went out on your own and I was curious if you would be interested in heading towards the walls as a group." He nodded at her grimly, looking at the mass of mangled bodies surrounding them.

"...I don't work with partners. Also, it's not much of a group if it's only two people. What happened to other man. The one who got left behind with you?"

"It's not a permanent solution. Just until the walls then we go our separate ways. Group or partnership it does not matter. People survive longer when banding together. The man, he was attacked by one of the undead on the beach. We were...caught off guard."

"I think I'm doing well on my own and that's not exactly painting you in a positive light. You couldn't react fast enough to save him?" She lowered the wand and slumped over slightly with her hands on her knees. Her hair glistened with sweat and beads of it dripped off her chin and nose.

Damase sighed, this didn't seem to be going well. The witch was clearly used to being alone and those who chose solitude were rarely pulled from it with ease. "I won't defend what happened, it was a mistake that I never intend to make again."

"That's sounds wonderful but intent doesn't mean much when when a dying body is digging its teeth into my throat because you weren't 'prepared' for it."

He let out a groan, this was going nowhere and it seemed that more of the dead were stumbling towards them. "Alright then, just...Do you intend to head towards the wall in the near future?"

"..." She sighed. He didn't seem to be malicious...but the trail of death that followed him here showed that he was dangerous, but he just didn't seem...malicious. Tired, yes. Frustrated, absolutely. Malicious? It didn't seem to fit. Though...she thought back to the Father who had condemned her, he never seemed malicious outwardly; smiling even as he condemned her to exile. Just because a man didn't seem malicious didn't mean he wasn't. No, she thought to herself. She would keep him at arms length and beyond for now. "Yes, I do intend to...eventually."

"Very well then." His lips thinned into a grimace. The Church, with their history of witches, would probably tell him to flatten her skull and send his praises to God in some hypocritical manner.

"Whenever you decide head out, be wary, there are strange creatures lurking in the sands. I haven't encountered them just yet, but I've caught glimpses. I've heard of creatures that hunt in the sands along the coasts back in Oriath. Whether they are the same I do not know. But If they are, your arcane blows may not be enough to take them out. I've heard that their hides are as hard as stone."

He nodded at her and began walking towards the wall. He could not force her to come and forcing his presence on her when she expressed her displeasure towards it would do nothing but anger her. As young as she seemed, she could clearly take care of herself so he wasn't too worried about her.

He stopped one moment and turned his head slightly.

"And if we happen to meet again, my name is Damase."

She raised a single eyebrow as she stared at his back. She half expected him to pester her more but it seemed that he was being sincere. She put his advice to memory, after all, there was no reason to lie to her about being wary of danger. Shaking her head of these thoughts she sat in the sand, letting the cool air caress her. She was used to death surrounding her and despite her earlier bravado, she did need some rest.

 _-Ugh...a partnership huh...what an idiot-_

* * *

Another skull exploded in gore as Damase trudged onwards towards the walls.

"The path becomes clearer with each bloody step. Well...clearer of bodies that is."

Damase sighed as he glanced at the wooden pikes, lazily side stepping another poor attempt at a grab and swung his mace into another skull. It seemed that as he got closer to the walls the amount of undead steadily...decreased. A comfort in some ways but unnerving as well.

 _-Either the walls contain a semblance of civilization and they clear the surrounding areas of the undead...or there's some ghastly freak that's slaughtered everything...-_

The sands behind him shifted subtly, a grotesque head poking out from the darkness.

Damase stopped in his tracks and listened quietly, a soft slithering noise sounded from behind him. He tensed his legs as he prepared to dive out the way and then turned his head slightly to one side, listening for continued movement. He had become quite adept at sensing the slight noises that archers made as they hid in the trees; the slight ticks as they nocked their arrows, the groaning of the bow-string as they drew a bolt, and the twanging noise the bow made as it loosed a bolt. This was no different to him.

His eyes widened as he threw his body to the side, hearing a sharp whistling noise come through the air; a black, stone-like object flew through the location his head had just occupied. He took a sharp glanced and saw...

 _-What the hell kind of spitter is that...Oriath has spitters but...none with that many eyes.-_

In front of him was a crustacean-like creature. It's shell smooth, glossy, and black. It's head had held an innumerable amount of red orbed eyes, none of them seemed to follow any path or pattern, instead staring off at different directions. It had a tail, though it was thick with a small opening at the end of it; back in Oriath people had called it the firing appendage.

Dismissing his confusion he took a firm stance facing the malformed creature. He kept his ears open, after all, back in Oriath, Spitters hunted in groups of two to three, overwhelming the opposition with mass fire.

The spitter clicked its mandibles at him and reared its firing appendage once more let loose another stony bolt.

Damase dodged slightly to the side and sprinted towards the creature, weaving left and right to make it harder for the spitter to take aim. Quickly, it began to turn itself around and burrow into the sand once again but Damase slammed his mace into it's back, crushing it in a disgusting squelch.

He got up and paused once again, listening for further movements in the sand.

"Hmmm...no friends? That's odd. Fortunate, but odd..."

* * *

Hiding behind a boulder a moderate distance away, the witch stared as she watched Damase crush the insect into oblivion.

 _-That was...impressively skillful. His reactions are far faster than I originally thought and his speed is incredibly surprising. Makes it more and more doubtful that some undead got the drop on him randomly...-_

She watched as he marched onwards to the walls once more. She had decided to tail him after he left; effectively she was using him to clear a path while reserving her strength. She had become accustomed to stalking around silently back in Oriath. Sure, she wasn't a master, but at this distance even a toddler could sneak around without having the man notice.

She smiled as she felt her reserves coming back to full power. However her smile disappeared as she felt the ground shake.

 ***THUD* …..**

 ***THUD* …..**

 ***THUD* …..**

Her eyes widened as she watched a humanoid figure lurch outwards from the shore and back onto the beach. He made the giant she met earlier in the group look pitifully minuscule. His body was riddled with arrows and a massive double-edged broadsword was nested deep in his chest, tearing out through his back.

In the corner of her eyes she saw Damase take a step back as the mammoth bellowed out with a deep roar. She stared towards the distance and saw a set of large wooden gates. While the behemoth was preoccupied turning the man into a red stain in the sands, she could probably run to the gates and get inside...assuming it would open of course.

Maybe another person would have felt a pang in their chest at the thought of abandoning a man to a probably horrifying death but she knew what mankind was like; evil, hypocritical, and vile to the core. No one had shown her mercy back in Oriath, so what was the point of showing it here in Wraeclast.

She drew a deep breath as she saw the massive undead lunge towards Damase. As he leaped to the side, away from the crushing blow, she sprinted straight towards the gates.

As she drew closer and closer to the gates she glanced once towards Damase and for just a fraction of a second, his eyes met hers and he...he nodded at her. She had expected to see some level anger or even wrath but he had just nodded and turned back to the giant.

With a grim look on his face as he rolled out of the way of another crushing blow and swung his mace into the behemoths legs. The damage it seemed to do was...pitifully small.

"Ahh!" She felt something slam against her leg and she slid into the sand face first. Spitting sand out of her mouth, she looked back and saw a pair of spitters staring her down. Her energy shield took all of the damage but she wasn't certain of how many more shots it could take before it drained her. She raised her wand and took careful aim.

 ***Krack* *Krack* *Krack***

She launched out multiple bolts of power, each one shattering parts of the tough armor. As the spitters turned tail and ran, she lurched back up, intending to continue her dash to the gates. Her nape prickled and her skin felt clammy as she heard loud thudding noises behind her. She didn't dare turn her head now, instead opting to run faster across the sand.

"Shit. Shit shit shit..." Her heart hammered in her chest as the thudding got louder and closer. Slightly further in the distance she could hear Damase shouting something, what it was she couldn't tell and frankly she didn't care all that much at the moment. She dared to glance back for just one instant as the thudding stopped for an instant. She went flying into the floor as the undead slammed into her with a tackle that spun the world into spirals. She felt her shield shatter as she bounced across the sands.

Lying in pain, she stared as the undead stumbled back to its feet and lumbered over to her. She weakly raised her wand, throwing weak blasts of energy in a feeble attempt to ward him off.

She could vaguely make out Damase's sprinting form.

 _-It's only fair that he abandons me, after all I did the same hadn't I...-_

She closed her eyes as the undead raised its gnarled arms, ready to bash her skull in.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Third chapter is here! If you feel like there are things I could improve I would love to know! I am doing this to improve my writing so I would appreciate constructive criticism. Especially since the only person that edits this before I publish it is me. So they finally take down Hillock in this chapter. So the big thing about this story is going to be magic and how it works in universe.**

 **The game never really gets too deep into how magic exactly works so I'll be taking some liberty in how I portray it. Also if you notice they did not get any skill gems at the beginning. This was on purpose. I felt that throwing skill gems in so early would be giving the main characters a bit too much power.**

 **I hope the fight is realistic enough.**

 **If you have any question feel free to ask!**

* * *

Chapter 3

Back in Oriath, the hunting squads often wove overly embellished tales of massive rhoa and giant apes. Monsters that towered over the tree line with teeth large as tombstones that could crush five men with one bite.

As embellished as those stories may have been, Damase had fought against creatures of impressive size before, though none quite as massive as those hunters claimed.

Ironically, through all the battles he fought in, the most dangerous enemies, as he had come to realize, were never the largest ones but the smartest ones.

Humans were unique in this regard. Humans were always dangerous to fight. Putting the two qualities together, he was sure, would create an absolute monster of a fighter.

He sighed as he watched the giant bull-rush him, its arms flailing wildly and its eyes crazed and devoid of life.

The gargantuan man that trudged out of the shore and rushed at him had the size part down but seemed to have regressed in the intelligence department.

He steeled himself, taking a step backwards, and waited until the last moment before leaping out of the way. The sand behind him exploded in a frenzy of rage and watery hate. He rolled onto his feet and watched as the creature, he refused to call that freak a man, rose back onto its feet and stared at the crater in the sand it had made. Damase felt a slight quirk hit his lips as he realized what was going on, the idiot couldn't tell he missed and was trying to find his body in the crater.

 _-Well, that speed and strength is certainly troublesome but its intellect is...underwhelming...-_

Damase gripped his mace tightly and sprinted towards the creature, intent on embedding the rusted steel into its head. The creature swiveled its head immediately and, seeing Damase charging at him, let out a bellowing roar and swung his entire body into a sweeping double armed blow.

He leaned back, dodging the blow, and used his built up momentum to slide across the sand for a slight distance, just close enough to swing the mace into the creatures chin, causing it to stumble and flail backwards into the sand.

In the corner of his vision he saw a young girl sprinting across the sands.

 _-Well I guess she didn't leave too long after I did. Though she must have been a bit far for me not to have caught wind of her until now.-_

His eyes locked with hers for a moment as she looked back towards him. He let out a mental sigh as he nodded towards her to head along towards the gate. His body was aching and his muscles screamed in protest at the thought of continued conflict but he doubted whoever resided behind those walls would take kindly to him leading the human mammoth towards them. The answer, then, was simple; kill the gargantuan freak and then proceed.

His eyes widened a bit as he saw a massive fist heading towards his face. Quickly, he lowered his body, letting the blow rocket over his head. He spun the rest of his body around the massive torso, allowing the rest of the creature to continue its pile-drive maneuver into the sand.

 _-Take out the legs so it can't keep bull rushing me. Then focus on slipping past those bulky arms and land some more crushing blows to it's skull-_

With a plan, as simple as it may have been, in set, Damase shot off towards the behemoth readying his mace. As it charged back towards him, Damase lowered his center of mass and weaved to the left, staying well below the grasping hands. Unlike the other times he passed through its clawing fingers, this time Damase ended up next to its side with his torso bent forwards. With years of training and experience, he twisted his torso as he took another step forwards with his right foot and slammed the mace into the creatures knee.

 ***KRACK***

The mace head separated from the handle in an explosive show of splinter and steel and like the creature it impacted, it flew off into the sands.

Damase cursed and rubbed his bleeding hands as he frantically looked for another weapon. The empty area gave him no hope and in the edges of his vision he could see the giant stumbling back up, it's right knee was caved in but it didn't seem to care one bit as it staggered back to standing position.

It's knee was a mutilated mess of flesh with bony splinters sticking out in every direction.

It turned around slowly, glaring at Damase with its dead eyes. It let out a bellowing roar as it crouched, the leg cracking and squelching as more weight was pressed down onto it.

A small distance away, Damase saw a bolt of light streak through the air. As he tracked it, his eyes widened as it impacted with the towering monster.

To give the girl some credit, the blow did cause the creature to stumble forwards a bit before it roared and began jerkily sprinting off towards her.

He gulped deep breaths of air as he realized just how tired his body was.

 _-Wait...-_

…

…

…

"Oh no..."

Damase's eyes widened as he came to realize what had just transpired. He tore off, arms and legs pumping as he took off towards the beast.

The girl was going to die a short death against a creature like that.

* * *

Her chest felt like someone had smashed an anvil through it. She didn't exactly have the time to count how many ribs were broken from the impact, but 'more than a couple' to 'all of them' seemed to be strong estimates.

As the mountainous man loomed over her she got a closer look at his face. His head had a massive wound on top of it and his face had been sheared of much of the skin and disgustingly twisted by the salty air and rough waves. His chin was torn apart, the bone splintering out of it like tiny shards of glass.

She had really thought that she would be one of the few to survive. She had everything going for her; ruthlessness, power, and cunning. She should have made it, but luck or God seemed to have different plans.

She tried to backpedal away as it raised its arms. Her feet slipped through the sand weakly, her torso was screaming at her to stop moving. She kept shifting her feet desperately. Her hands clawed through the sand, looking for purchase. She realized as death's arms were raised to their apex, there was nothing she could do to escape. Her desperate movements began to cease as the pain overtook her, she closed her eyes, hoping that it would at least be quick.

From afar, through the cacophony of sounds, she heard the whistling of wood through the wind.

She heard a deafening roar escape the beasts lips. She opened her eyes and saw two arrows embedded deep in his eye sockets.

The new lack of vision seemed to fuel the rage it seemingly thrived on.

Bulky hands grasped the shafts of each arrow, wrenching them out like they were tiny toothpicks, the damage was already done though. He was completely blind.

As it reared back, it dragged its bulky hands down its face looking for the nonexistent covering that closed off its vision.

With renewed strength, her hands slammed once more into the sand, lifting her protesting torso off the ground. Rolling away from the immediate threat, her eyes flicked towards the walls, seeing a lone figure balancing on of the palisade pillars with a bow.

Whoever that was must have had incredible accuracy.

The brutish figure rose back to its feet once more, it gripped the hilt sticking out of its chest with both icy hands. The broadsword released a wet, squelching noise as it left its gory sheath.

The witch stood deathly still, knowing that any sound would mean attracting the ire of the blade wielding maniac.

Feet slowly shuffled to the right, making as little noise as possible. Eyes widened as they saw the approaching figure of a man. Her arms began waving wildly signaling him to stop.

 _-What the fuck?! I though he was heading towards the walls...Did this idiot seriously decide to come 'save' me? FUCK! STOP PLEASE! STOP NOW!-_

Luckily, Damase saw her signaling and slid to a stop before he closed the distance fully and tackled the giant.

Unluckily, his charging still alerted the creature to his presence.

* * *

As the creature swung to face him, Damase took notice of the situation. The situation mainly being the gargantuan freak who was not only enraged and blinded, but was now also wielding an appropriately massive broadsword.

His head narrowly avoided decapitation as the blade flew through the space it would have occupied just moments earlier.

Unarmed against a raging giant that was blind and wielding a blade that was probably made to skewer full grown rhoa lengthwise. Yes, this was pretty much in line with what the Templar Order trained him for.

 _Focus both mind and spirit, while strength comes from the body, power comes from the spirit._

Teachings and practices he had carved into his being were brought back up as his breathing slowed to a crawl, even as he twisted his body around the fatal blows.

 _Allow the will of God to encompass your soul, feel the pooling of energy at your core and guide it to where you need._

The bishops were far more adept at using these techniques but all Templars were given training to hone their minds in conjunction with their bodies.

A set of arms received a dull glow. Damase weaved past the blade and slammed an energy shielded fist into the brutes cheek, causing the flesh to mold around his knuckles.

A skull flew backwards, nearly detaching from the neck it was attached to.

His arms bulged as he continued his assault. His body ducking and weaving through a deadly maelstrom of sword swings, fists explosively hammering into the aberrations head.

One, two, three, four…Damase counted the blows he landed. His mind began to blank out as his focus sharpened to unnatural levels. Most of the Order said it to be a holy blessing known as The Essence of the Templar.

Most Templars said it was just battle instinct honed over countless bloodshed.

The sharpened edge of a blade crashed through the air he had just occupied with the force of a hurricane. A shame that hurricanes do little damage when there's nothing to hit Damase thought to himself as he twisted his body.

He bent low when he dodged this time. He lunged at the shattered kneecap, a sickening squelching sound came out as the leg bent ninety degrees in the wrong direction. The massive body toppled over as physics took hold.

Damase repositioned himself, his legs restricting an arm while wrapping around the muscled neck. His arms wrenched the remaining offending limb into a twisted position and the blade was flung out of the creatures grip from the sudden shift.

 _-Maybe this wasn't a good plan...-_

His muscles bulged as he struggled against the undead force of nature. Sweat rolled down his forehead as his body screamed in continued protest at being used as a biological restraining chain.

Even through the roaring sound of anger and sand being flung around, his ears picked up the whistling of arrows.

A slight thumping noise sounded as they embedded themselves in the dying flesh.

One arrow, two arrows, three arrows…He was impressed that someone could accurately land so many arrows consecutively. Though...the target was shadowing most of the surrounding area with his massive torso and he didn't exactly know how far this archer was.

It didn't matter much either way to him. His lungs inflated as air filled them to the brim and with a loud roar his lungs deflated as his arms shoved in different directions.

The arm he was restraining snapped like tightly coiled rope.

The creature responded by flailing twice as hard, throwing Damase to the side.

Rolling to his feet, his eyes noticed the enormous sword that had been thrown aside in the tussle. He sprinted towards it. Lifting the hulk of steel with two hands, he locked eyes with the still flailing beast.

Not that it could even see him with those mangled orbs.

He slowly stepped across the sands, ready to sink the blade into the creature's neck.

 ***Fwoosh***

The sands glowed as fire lit the creature ablaze.

He saw the young girl, her wand pointed at the undead aberration and rage etched into her eyes. She took a knee in the sands as the flailing mass continued to burn and writhe in the flames, her wand arm dropped to her side as sweat poured from her face.

The flaming creature slammed it's one comparatively good arm into the ground and flexed his single leg, preparing to lunged. At this distance it could probably close the distance with a lunge or two, though the blade that exploded out of its neck seemed to stop all movement almost instantly.

Damase grunted as he drove the blade home, consequently driving the burning freak into the sands below him. He ripped his hands away from the hilt and rolled away from the corpse and the fire that consumed it. Excessive burns probably wouldn't help him at all at this point he thought to himself grimly.

He took deep, harsh breaths. His gray eyes locked with the witch's black pair.

 _-Black like coal huh...guess it matches her affinity to fire...-_

Thin legs shakily rose to a standing position. Lips parted, closed, and opened again. Her mind clawed at words and stuck them together into haphazard fragments.

"I...Thanks...Helping me…Just...yeah..." Hard breaths separated each broken sentence. Slowly, her breathing calmed down. "Why did you come back to help me? I...I used you and then abandoned you."

"Saving someone's life is not a matter of reparation. It is a grace."

"I don't need someone's 'grace'..."

"I see...well then. Just consider it a favor and nothing more." His lips morphed into a tired smile. "Have the energy to make it to the walls?"

"...Yes...Do you know who was shooting those arrows?"

"No I don't, but I'm sure that once we reach the walls we'll find out." People loved to be appreciated. There was no way this person would stay quiet about it. No possible way.

He started walking at a slow pace, keeping the girl in his peripheral. She was limping a bit but he knew better. That hit she took earlier was no small blow. He didn't want to push her to accept his assistance but if she fell flat on her face…

"Seraphine..."

He raised a single eyebrow at her. Turning slightly towards her.

"You gave me your name earlier. Damase, right? Mine is Seraphine."

Shooting a small smile at her, he nodded and continued walking. Small victories were best celebrated in silence.

Eventually they reached the imposing wooden palisades. A closed, wooden gate blocked the only entrance.

With a low groan, the gate swung open.

The two of them stared at the smirking form of a short haired woman wielding a bow.

* * *

 _*Earlier behind the walls*_

"With the amount of time you've spent staring at me I'm beginning to think that you've got a thing for the roguish type." Lips twisted into a leery smirk.

A harsh scoff popped out Kacela's throat. "You're a fucking idiot. Moreover, I'm glaring at you, not staring. You're asshole behavior is just that bothersome."

"Sure, I know I'm just that attractive, you don't have to remind me."

"I said bothersome. Clearly you're deaf as well."

"Yet you can't keep your attention off me." One eyebrow lifted while shoulders squared themselves.

They had finally entered the...walled off campsite. She hesitated at calling it anything more than that. The population was small and the only shelter available were some miniscule huts.

A man who called himself Tarkleigh immediately greeted then as they entered. His demeanor was grim but he seemed genuinely relieved that they had made it to the walls.

Kerr had gone off on his own to talk to the man who greeted them. Odelia pretty much zeroed in on one of the only other woman in the town, Nessa. Ahimoth was...somewhere...he seemed to enjoy solidarity and silence more than anything.

This left her and...Enzo...to spend some 'quality' time together.

 _-You know what...That Odelia girl and Nessa seem like much better company. Time to join their conversation. And besides...regardless of how...weak that Odelia woman may look she clearly has some measure of skill. So I doubt she's just another noble broad with no brain.-_

Squarely ignoring Enzo, Kacela stalked right towards the conversing woman.

"Well alrighty then. You just go of on your own then! I'm sure you'll be back soon enough for more of me."

 _-Just have to get the last word in huh. What a fucking asshole.-_

Rolling her eyes, she made her way to the pair.

* * *

"Hey there, room for another woman to join this conversation?" She gave Nessa a solid smile, hoping for a good first impression.

"Ahh this is Kacela, she was one of the exiles that was dumped here with us. One of the few with a solid head that isn't filled with either muscle or arrogance." Odelia gave her a warm smile, she knew better tan to attract the ire of someone who could help her.

"I saw you running across the sands with that bow. Quite the shot aren't you? Running fast enough to catch up to the rest of your little group while shooting the undead in the face is quite a feat. I hope your speed never fails you here, it'll be one of the few things separating you from death."

A cheeky grin graced her features. "Ahh thank you. I was hunter back in Oriath. One of the Rangers specifically." She wasn't ashamed of being one in Oriath so she had no qualms being one in Wraeclast.

"Wow. My parents told me about the Rangers before. They gave them a...distinct reputation. Ahaha...I'm sure they weren't all that accurate though."

"Depends on what kinds of traits that 'reputation' depicts. I'm guessing deceitful and thieving are the two biggest traits?"

"...If I said no would you believe me?"

Kacela laughed, a real laugh this time. Not the hollow and grim laugh she had been giving all day. "Well I suppose they weren't completely wrong, some of us were notorious thieves. I stayed apart from that side for the most part but it wasn't completely incorrect."

"My father, before our ship sunk in the oceans near Wraeclast, told me about your people. He also mentioned quite a bit of stealing that went on. " Kacela's smile slipped slightly. "Ahaha don't worry though, I'm not exactly in a position to judge anyone while stuck here in this wretched place. I've dedicated most of my life to helping the exiles that get stranded here. Helping heal injuries and such. I heard from Odelia that there were two others on the beach that were left behind. Is that true?"

The smile fully slid off of her face as she remembered the abandoning of the two men. She felt guilty looking back on it. She could have waited. She could have gone back to help them once she found the bow and shitty arrows. She could have, but she didn't.

"Yeah...we left them because...well I'm sure she's already told you about it. Doesn't make it right. Doesn't make it better. But I made my choice and while I do regret it, I just have to live with it."

Nessa sighed, understanding where the woman was coming from. After all, Wraeclast was a...difficult continent to survive on. As long as she didn't aim to hurt any of the others Nessa would accept that answer.

Their heads all jerked up as they heard the sound of wrath-filled roars.

"It seems that Hillock has found something new to slaughter."

Odelia frowned. "Who is Hillock? What kind of monster can roar that loudly so as to hear it from this far?"

"Hillock is…was a man that used to be a famed blacksmith. He was a massive man at birth and a massive man at death. Though it turned out that even hell was too small a place to hold him. So he came back."

"He's attacking someone outside the walls...Stay here while I check this out."

"Shooting arrows at Hillock will do little. His skull is thick and the dead feel no pain."

"Kacela, I'll be honest to you. It's probably those two men we left behind. Either that or that girl who ran off on her own. Hell it may be all three now that I really think about it..." Odelia looked at her grimly. Truth be told she felt a level of guilt as well for leaving them behind but...she knew she didn't have the strength or skill at the moment to help them, at least not in any meaningful way.

"Just stay here. I mean both of you by the way. Not just you Odelia." She leveled a gaze at Nessa. She didn't want either of them to get hurt. Odelia wasn't the most powerful person around and Nessa was closer to being a doctor than a fighter.

"Trust me, I know I can't do anything against that freak. Go to Tarkleigh though, he will have much better arrows than the rotten shafts you're were using earlier."

Nodding, Kacela took off as fast as her legs would allow her to. She needed to hurry if she wanted to help whoever was out there.

* * *

Tarkleigh stared at the muscle bound back of the Karui man he had been speaking to. He shook his head.

 _-Looking for other Karui tribes while he's stuck on this island…Brave, stupid, and brash. What a suitably Karui mentality.-_

"You're Tarkleigh right?" A hand waved in front of his face as he snapped to attention. A much smaller human was staring at him expectantly; a woman with short hair and a withering bow.

"Yes, you're part of the group of exiles that recently made it to the walls am I correct?"

"Yeah, Nessa told me that you had arrows that I could use. You heard the roaring outside the walls right?"

"..."

Nessa...always doing her best to help people…sending this tiny girl out to fight Hillock though...didn't sound quite like her at all. "I have arrows, yes, but going out there to fight Hillock is suicide. Not even the giant from your group could match his size and strength."

"Nice to know that behemoth men are common here. Also I don't plan on going out the walls to shoot him. I'll be shooting from on top of them." She frowned at him. There wasn't anytime to waste and every second spent arguing was another second whoever was fighting Hillock outside the walls could die.

"...Ugh..." A single hand slid from the top of his forehead down to his chin. He was getting a bit old to be dealing with this kind of behavior. "Judging by the volume of his roars, Hillock is quite a few paces away. You'll never land a single shot from here. Also, standing on top of the walls doesn't sound like the best position to be firing arrows from."

"Look, I get it; I really understand where you coming from but I'm just asking you to trust me just a bit. I can make the shots. I've made harder shots from more unconventional positions."

One eyebrow raised, she didn't look nervous, she didn't seem fidgety. She seemed so...confident. He sighed and walked to the supply hut behind him. A few arrows wouldn't hurt and even if she missed her target it wouldn't hurt anyone else. Assuming she didn't miss Hillock and instead pierce the poor soul fighting him.

"Thank you. Once this Hillock goes down I'll be sure to even retrieve your arrows for you." She gave him a wink and sprinted towards the walls.

"..." He sighed again. Maybe Nessa would be free to converse for a bit, it had been some time since he last talked to her…

* * *

She climbed to the top of one of the palisade spikes. It was dull at the top, having been damaged over time by the hostile weather.

Balancing on something so narrow while flinging arrows at a moving target from such a range was unthinkable for most.

But she was born in the forest and raised as a ranger. She spent her days jumping through the treeline, shooting wild game with her bow.

Something like this was trivial.

Narrowing her eyes, she saw the sight of a young girl launching...blue...shiny...globs across the sand?

 _-Definitely a witch…I'll swallow an entire arrow if she's not using a wand to fire those projectiles.-_

Her eyes moved across the scene to…

 _-Lord Ngen...-_

When they said he was massive she expected a man a slight bit larger than Kerr…This mammoth towered over the sands like an ancient oak towered over the grass. He made the man he was fighting look like an infant.

 _-Who is he...is that the man who was passed out? Where's the other guy?-_

She winced a bit as she saw the flash of steel slamming into flesh.

 _-He's...a lot better than I thought. He might be able to beat this freak on his own. Ohhhhh that looks fucking awful...-_

One leg tensed a bit as she tracked the steel mace as it connected with the massive, decaying knee.

As the man drew up, his weapon broken and shattered against the hard bone, she drew her bow and nocked a single arrow.

Her eyes widened as the girl sent a stray shot that connected with Hillock.

An arrow was pulled back as Hillock connected with his new, petite target.

Hillock lumbered to the girl and raised his arms.

She let loose the arrow and quickly re-nocked another arrow, letting it fly soon after.

They met their mark, blinding Hillock immediately.

She was about to launch more arrows to stall him, but Hillock then drew his blade in one mighty pull.

From his chest…

 _-Well...that's quite impressive to be hon...What is he doing? Oh fuck...-_

The mace wielder was running straight towards Hillock with nothing but his fists and he didn't seem to be stopping. At least the witch clearly had the right idea of staying silent.

Hillock turned to the man and charged him.

 _-I hope his plan isn't to just punch him with his...-_

Sighing, she aimed her arrow and prepared to fire. Maybe the man had a trick for fighting barehanded. It certainly seemed that way as Hillocks head was being knocked around like the weaved ball in a game of shotball.

When they went to the sands grappling she decided to start taking shots.

Arrow after arrow slammed into Hillocks torso, doing about as much damage as a fly would to a brick wall after being thrown really hard.

She cringed as Hillocks arm snapped 90 degrees in the wrong direction. This man was far stronger than she originally thought.

 _-How in the world did HE pass out on the beach but mister fancy fencer somehow made it wide awake?-_

As the man rolled back to his feet and lifted the gargantuan blade, the witch sliced her wand through the air, lighting Hillock on fire.

 _-Yeah...definitely a witch...-_

She cursed as Hillock turned around and blindly charged in the witch's direction.

 _-Fuck...-_

Her eyes widened as she grabbed empty air.

Her head snapped back up, eyes wide, the girl was going to...she was going to die.

She definitely would have, but the blade piercing through Hillock's neck seemed to put a stop to that idea.

She let out a small sigh of relief as Hillock toppled over, finally dead.

As the rapid beating of her heart slowed to its normal pace, Kacela climbed down from the pillar she had been perched on.

It was time to say hello to the two late comers.

Also, she had to go get those fucking arrows for Tarkleigh.

* * *

 **A/N: End of the chapter here. So Kacela knows that her arrows aren't causing pain or really stop him. The whole point would be to impair movement and just make it difficult for Hillock to move without damaging muscles. Now Hillock, of course wouldn't know this so all he ends up doing is squirming around while arrow heads slice across his pectoral muscles.**

 **Damase finally learns Seraphine's name. If you're wondering a lot of these names have meanings behind them. None of them particularly clever in my opinion but they matter enough to me I guess.**

 **I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Yes, Kacela will be getting Tarkleigh's arrows back. Just not all of them.**

 **So I made it so that all Templars are taught to harness their magic and use it properly. Energy shields will not be linked to armor as it is in the game. At least, it wont be the only way to get an energy shield. I have a plan for how clothing, weapons, magic, and gems are going to work together but it's not the focus for now.**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: It's been a while but here is chapter four! This story is going to be updated a bit slowly but Expect them every two weeks or so, no later.**

* * *

"You two didn't have to come back out here to grab arrows with me you know…"

"Yes, but you did save my life so just consider this paying back the favor."

A man's lips quirked into a smirk. "Is that really comparable. Seems a bit disproportionate."

"...Shut up..." She scowled at his words "Why are you even here?"

"To help gather arrows?" Kacela rolled her eyes as she bent down to pick up one final arrow.

"Alright that makes 24 arrows. Tarkleigh better be happy about this..." She sighed in relief. Only six of them had broken in the ensuing struggle allowing her to take the majority back to their owner. Hopefully the joy of being rid of Hillock would help him overlook his six lost arrows.

"Thanks for helping out. So what brought this unlikely alliance about?"

A pair of heads turned to look at each other and then back at their interrogator. Damase sighed and shook his head.

"We actually went our separate ways for a while but we ended up meeting back together once 'Hillock' emerged from the water."

"...Yeah...exactly that..." Her face twisted into a slight grimace.

"Uh huh...Sure...Well do either of you have a plan when you get past the walls? Any plans of sticking together?"

"I plan on finding directions to get inland. The Order taught me enough regarding this continent; it's vile history and archaic traditions." He held his true plans closer to his heart. No need to give out unnecessary information, after all, that is what got him exiled in the first place.

"I don't...I don't have much of a plan honestly. I 'plan' on surviving no matter what." She fidgeted under the woman's gaze. She wasn't used to this level of attention and conversation.

"Well alright then. It would do both of you well to go talk to Tarkleigh when we get inside. He seems to run the place and he'll know about getting inland and the likes." She nodded towards Damase.

As they headed back towards the campsite, shadowed eyes watched them from afar.

* * *

 _-_ _It's very...quaint. How have they survived for all this time?_ _I doubt trade routes are very viable out here._ _-_

Passing through the splintered gate, they made their way to a man standing a ways away, a bandage covered one eye and a strap of cloth ran across his bare chest. He smiled at them and strode in their direction.

"That was some damn fine work you exiles did on Hillock! How in the world you all learned to fight so well ain't my place to ask so I won't, but just know you have my deepest gratitude." His laughter rang across the walled enclosure. Several heads sprang upwards at the news declaring the death of the coastal beast.

"You saw the fight? I didn't think you had followed me to the palisades." Kacela raised an eyebrow as she held out a quiver of blood soaked arrows. "By the way, I believe these are yours. Though, some broke on their journey to Hillock."

"I climbed up to one of the watch towers! Thought of following you at first but realized you might not have wanted any distractions." He pushed the quiver back while smiling brightly. "Keep them. You deserve them at this point. I'll even replace the six that were destroyed!"

He ushered them to follow him as he rushed back to his supply hut.

* * *

As Tarkleigh returned from the hut with supplies for all of them, Seraphine stood their dumbly, staring at the set of clothes extended towards her.

Her eyes jumped from the supplies to Tarkleigh himself.

"Ahh...are you looking for something more...specific? I don't exactly have much else in the realm of clothing. Most of what I have are just collected from what other exiles are willing to trade me."

She shook her head, grabbed the clothes, and headed into the hut to change.

Damase stared as her scowling form retreated into the hut.

 _-Is she...angry? Probably best not to pry. I doubt she considers us allies even after that ordeal.-_

"We should head back towards Nessa, she's like a doctor so if you're hurt I think she could help." Kacela smiled at Damase.

She felt far more comfortable now, wearing a plain white shirt, a black pair of leather pants, and a pair of black boots.

"Thank you for the sympathy but I'm fine. Just a bit exhausted overall." He rolled his shoulders a bit, testing the strain his muscles had gone through. Kacela nodded and paused for a moment before speaking up.

"I see. Look I've been meaning to ask you for a bit now, what's with that girl you're with? She seems...difficult to say the least."

As Damase recalled the events leading up to their current situation, Kacela crossed her arms and listened intently.

"I see…So what got you sent out here to Oriath?"

"...I had a...falling out…with the Templar Order and the Court of Divine Temperance."

"Templar...You...You're a Templar?" Her eyes widened. Templars were never exiled. Templars were born for the Order, born to obey, born to die for their High Templar. "What did you do to anger Dominus that much?"

"I did not agree with the Court of Divine Temperance. THAT is the only crime one need commit for exile." His words came out like caustic acid. Burning the very air with their vitriol.

"I won't pry into that. Sounds like the Rangers were right about those self-righteous fools."

Damase sighed. High Templar Dominus had changed so much about the Templar order. The Orders of Voll had fallen away and been buried under the Court of Divine Temperance. Then the rumors started. Rumors of the High Templar taking citizens both young and old onto rickety wooden ships, disappearing for weeks only to return on his own, citizens lost to whatever dark annals they were taken too.

"Ahhh I apologize for my forgetfulness." He laughed lightly, throwing away his darker thoughts. "I never gave you my name." He extended a hand towards Kacela. "Damase."

Taking his hand and giving it a tight squeeze she replied. "It's fine. You've been through quite the day so far. It's understandable. You may call me Kacela. What about the girl? Do you know anything about her?"

"Her name is Seraphine. Aside from that, not much else."

"Hmmm...The two of you plan on sticking together?"

"I doubt it still. She doesn't seem keen on staying in a group."

"I noticed that early on." She recalled their first meeting. If you could even call it a meeting. "Have you noticed that she's..." Her words trailed off as her right hand waved an imaginary stick.

"Yes. I noticed the moment I saw her..." Though it might have been a bit more obvious for him since the first second he saw her, she was surrounded by charred bodies while holding a wand.

She raised an eyebrow at him. "And you were still willing to stick it out with her? Don't Templars hate witches?" The Court had a history of dealing with witches in their own way. Their was no Confession to the Lords for a witch. They were punished immediately with exile, even if they committed no crimes.

"Templars do hate witches. They are raised to destroy whatever the Court deems wicked."

"Then why did you…you know...help her?"

"Same reason why the Court exiled me; I cared less about what I was taught by the Sage Lords and cared more about the people I was supposed to protect."

"Sounds like they punished you for being a good man."

"I refused to obey an order that came directly from the High Templar. It depends on what you think a good man would have done."

Her eyes widened. That would do it. Disobeying a direct order from the High Templar himself...That was no small crime to the leading religion of Theopolis.

"I suppose it depends on the situation doesn't it." She replied carefully, taking care not too push too far.

"No, if Dominus himself gave an order I doubt it was something humane." Kacela jumped at the scathing words. She looked to her side and saw Seraphine walking out of the hut.

"How much did you hear of our conversation?" Kacela asked the young girl.

"Only the last words Damase said." She gave him a pointed look. "I'll stab myself in the eye with this wand if Dominus' order wasn't some inhumane order."

"Depends on your point of view I suppose."

"And what is your point of view, Templar?"

"...I didn't agree with what he asked. I don't need to go any deeper than that." He stared at Seraphine. At least she was talking more.

"Sooooo...Would you all like to go meet Nessa now?" Kacela eyed Seraphine. The girl was hiding it well but she was still wincing slightly on one side of her body.

"Yes, however, I need to ask Tarkleigh about getting inland."

"...I suppose so..."

"Good!" She clapped her hands and started walking. She glanced at Damase, meeting his eyes for just a moment as he flicked his eyes at Seraphine.

* * *

She trudged alongside her two...companions? She didn't know what to call them at this point. They had both saved her life and had not asked her of any recompense. Did this make them allies? Maybe companions at the least right?

"Ah!" Her feet stumbled as a pain flared in her chest again. Damase caught her by the arm, keeping her face from slamming into the cold hard ground.

"Alright then. We aren't foo far now. Just make it a bit farther."

She slapped his hands away and straightened her back. "I'm fine. I can make it without your assistance."

He sighed as he watched her quicken her pace.

"Quite a bit hostile isn't she..." Kacela's voice came out as a whisper. "How bad do you reckon the damage is?"

"At least three ribs fractured on the left side. Right side might be bruised a bit but seems better overall." She was certainly tougher than most people it seemed. Not many people could breathe without signs of pain let alone walk and talk casually while having fractured ribs.

"I can hear both of you...I. Am. Fine." Her words came out rough and staggered.

"No. You're really not 'fine', just let Nessa take a look. She might have something to help."

"What is she going to do? Slap seawater on to my chest?"

Damase sighed. "None of us know what her level of expertise is but it really can't hurt to check. Broken ribs need time and medicine to heal properly. You want to survive, right?"

Her lips twisted into a grim scowl for a moment before settling down into a small frown.

"I...suppose you're not wrong...Either way, I don't need you to carry me there. I can make it on my own."

"Very well then." He let out another tired sigh. She reminded him of some of the younger Templars when they first started out. Prideful of their skill and strength, they always held their pain close to their chest in fear that the more experienced members would look down on them for their weakness.

Though, when he thought about it, they weren't completely wrong on that front. The Order had a bad habit of demonizing weakness indirectly. Templars were taught true men of faith were graced by God with strength.

Looking back at it all, Damase couldn't help but wonder if The Order and The Court had always been corrupt, even before Dominus. Perhaps he had just been too prideful to see it.

Perhaps.

* * *

"Kacela! You're back! I heard from Tarkleigh here that you helped kill Hillock!" Kacela nearly fell backwards when Nessa tackled her with a crushing hug. For a woman so tiny, Nessa was quite strong.

"Urk...Nessa, I just helped out a bit." She looked back towards the other two, Seraphine looked disgruntled as always and Damase...was openly laughing at her. She narrowed her eyes and put on her sweetest voice. "Actually Nessa. The two over there did most of the work. I should have brought you along in hindsight, really they were just incredible. Especially Damase."

She smirked when Nessa ran off to 'properly' thank the two of them.

"So I gather everything wrapped up nicely?" Odelia stood their with her arms crossed across her ample bosom. She found herself pleasantly surprised that she felt genuine relief Kacela had come back safely. There weren't that many women in the watch to begin with and while Nessa was nice, she clearly didn't have a drive to go deeper into Wraeclast and make a name for herself.

"Yeah but like I told Nessa, the two over there did most of the work. In fact Damase, he's the one who was passed out on the beach earlier, went hand to hand against the brute."

"Really now." Odelia was genuinely surprised at that. She, like most of their group, had written him off as a dead cause. Another unlucky fool to have made it to the shore but not any further. To think he actually had the skill and strength to go against the supposedly giant man was…well, she supposed it wasn't unthinkable at this point but it was not too long ago.

Sure, he was certainly fit but from the way Nessa had described Hillock earlier…

"Where in the hell did he get the training to do that?"

"Templar."

"Templar…?" That was unreal. A Templar in...exile. Her father was one of the higher members of the Court so she had an extensive history learning about the The Order. The Order was supposed to be the sword and shield for the Court of Divine Temperance. When she was younger, her father told her how Templars were the heroes of Oriath and kept all evil at bay. As she grew older she learned exactly what 'keeping evil at bay' meant.

It wasn't never as pure as she was told.

If Damase had been exiled here to Wraeclast…he had disobeyed the High Templar.

What that meant she had no clue, but the gossip mill run by the other noble girls in Theopolis ran into deep waters once before when rumors that the High Templar was making frequent visits to Wraeclast surfaced.

"He's definitely not what you would expect a Templar to be." There was no market in making enemies on Wraeclast so Odelia chose her words carefully and with restraint. "Do you think he's...you know...safe?"

"Pfttt" Kacela snorted at her trepidation. "No man that strong can ever be classified as 'safe', but I doubt he's going to attack any-"

"Looks like the dyke has returned. Are you flirting here with dear Odelia? You should know she isn't-"

Kacela dragged her hand down her face as she heard a familiar voice. "Oh for fucks sake..." She turned around to see Enzo's leering eyes locking onto Odelia. Or at least from this angle that's what it looked like but she would bet her dominant hand he was just staring at her massive bosom.

"Cmon now dear, I just came here to make sure you women were doing alright." Kacela noted his stare didn't waver an inch as he spoke. He was definitely staring at Odelia's chest..."That frightening roar must have gotten you all into quite the tizzy am I right?"

Kacela opened her mouth ready to deride his entire family lineage but Odelia spoke first. "Actually, Kacela went off to help fight Hillock along with the two over there." She pointed back towards Nessa, Damase, and Seraphine. The last of whom seemed to be attempting to contact some demonic force to carry her out of the ensuing conversation.

As Kacela viewed the scene she almost felt bad for how bothered the girl looked.

Almost.

"Oh so what you're telling me is that it took three of you to take down one man?" Enzo laughed at Kacela, spit flying from his mouth as he continued to deride the three of them. "Well I suppose it makes sense, it's basic arithmetic isn't it? The three of you put together probably equal about one man or so."

"If you're such a 'man', why didn't you go out their to fight him then?" In the distance, Damase turned his head and saw the commotion. Kacela grinned at him and motioned for him to approach.

"And waste my time fighting trash? I have far be-"

"Sounds like you were just a coward." Kacela's grin widened as his face grew red with rage.

Damase put a single hand on Nessa's shoulder, quieting her, as he pointed at Enzo. He sighed and motioned for her and Seraphine to stay behind.

"C-Coward?" His shoulders shook with rage and his breath came out harsh and fast. "Look you fucking whore, keep your damn comm-"

His words were cut off when a single hand slammed down on his shoulder and clenched.

"Uh huh...You know boy, you should temper your tongue a bit more." Kacela could only smirk in greater glee as Damase stared Enzo down. She doubted he was all that much older than any of them but his eyes held the same strict gaze most elder Templars had.

Though it seemed Enzo cared little for such intimidation tactics as he shook the hand off his shoulder and turned to fully face Damase.

"Oh really? And what if I don't? Who exactly is going to force me?" Enzo could only laugh at the thought. "You? You couldn't even fight one man without the help of a fucking child."

"I'm not a chi-" Damase cut her off with a strict look before she could even get started.

"No, I have no plans in forcing a man to do anything he doesn't want to." He said, raising a single eyebrow.

"...Then what the fuck are you going on about?" Enzo said confusedly.

Damase continued to stare him down.

"..." Enzo shifted uncomfortably. His gaze was getting quite uncomfortable.

"You want to fight? Is that what you want?" He was getting angrier each second their eyes remain locked. There was no chance he would concede at this point.

"No. I'd rather not." Enzo still grasped the hilt of his blade.

"Then what the hell do you think you're doing? Coming here and telling me how to treat women."

"I merely imparted you with some advice. It's solely your choic-"

"Fuck off." Enzo finally stalked off intent on putting distance between them.

Damase sighed, for all the jokes that were made about women and their drama, Damase firmly believed that the worst drama only came from young men sheltering their pride.

"What an ass am I right?" Kacela said loudly, elbowing Damase as she grinned from ear to ear. He rolled his eyes and turned to face her and Odelia.

"He's just a bit boisterous. It'll calm down with age I'm certain." He said confidently despite their sniggering. Kacela raised an eyebrow at him and planted a hand firmly on her hip.

"Yeah sure it will, by the way I've been meaning to ask, but-"

"Older than you, younger than the dirt." He cut her off, intent on keeping his age as private as he could. It was one of the few secrets he had here and had no intention of simply rattling his age off to anyone who asked. She grinned at his response and thew a biting retort.

"Sounds like the old one's a bit sensitive about age isn't he." She shot Odelia a cheeky grin only to be met with a nervous smile. It seemed that Odelia was still a bit nervous so she shot Damase the look.

The look was a time tested technique unique she had learned from her mother. She told her that in times of great struggle it was used to convey messages between two people with no words or other actions.

Damase saw it and took point as expected of him.

"You don't need to be afraid of me noble. I'm not here to kill you."

Kacela's palm made its way down her face slowly. As she flicked her eyes towards the increasingly frightened girl next to her she couldn't help but wonder whether or not all Templar were this...obtuse with their words.

"That means hello in Damase tongue." Kacela said, trying to clear up the confusion. Odelia merely shifted her weight from foot to foot. Slowly she opened her mouth and spoke.

"Templar...Where will your feet lead you next?" She asked, her hands clutching the edges of her shirt as her lips thinned in slight displeasure.

Damase closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. When he opened them he stared hard at the young noble-girl.

"Inland towards the city, I'm going to look for _him_." He said simply. Truth be told it wasn't doing him well to simply be dawdling along here in the small fort -who knew where Dominus could be.

Kacela frowned at his words.

"You still plan on finding him?" Kacela asked. "Dominus. You don't even know if he's here. He could still be back in Oriath."

"He's here. On this continent. I can feel it." Damase retorted, his hands clenched into fists as he took a deep breath -his lungs filled with the cool, salty air.

"I'm going to Tarkleigh to find a way inland. Where will the two of you go?"

 _That's a good question isn't it. Where the hell do I plan on going from here?_ Kacela thought.

"I guess I'll head inland as well. Maybe there's something left to salvage you know?"

"I...I actually don't know. I thought about heading inland as well but..." Odelia hesitated, unsure of what she wanted. She was exiled for murdering her husband the day they got married, no real reason for her to head inland like the others. She wasn't looking for a challenge of any sort either.

"I would honestly recommend staying here, it seems to be...relatively safe. If I come across somewhere safer I'll be sure to come back and tell you." Kacela said.

"That would be nice I guess."

Damase nodded and gestured towards Tarkleigh.

It was time for a change in scenery.

* * *

 **A/N: Thanks for reading! I hope you continue to enjoy my writing!**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: You know, this is going to be the first story I update out of my hiatus out of sheer principle. So here's chapter 5 of this story which shouldn't be nearly as hard to write as it is.**

 **Expect more consistent updates from here on out! I promise!**

* * *

"You know," Kacela stared at him with a critical eye, "I was okay before, since there were more…pressing matters to attend to…" She grimaced slightly and brought her hand up to cover the precious orbs which had guided her for so long. "But Damase, I really must ask, why aren't you wearing PANTS?" The armor he was wearing was certainly long enough to cover the bare essentials but it was basically a skirt…

WHY WAS HE WEARING WHAT AMOUNTED TO A SKIRT?

In Damase's opinion –expert as it was- she was overreacting. His garb was fine. As long as he covered the jewels there wasn't really a reason to complain –plenty of Templar went with minimal lower garb.

"It's not that-"

"No, it's pretty awful Damase." She interrupted quickly, not allowing him to get a word in edgewise. "Why can't you just wear pants?" She asked exasperatedly.

 _How petulant. Why are women so focused on looks rather than practicality…?_ He thought to himself as she continued to rant about his lack of lower garments.

"We can get you something easy to move! Just something please!" She pleaded with him desperately. There was no way she would face the horrors of Wraeclast with a man who was literally half naked on the WRONG half. As she always told herself during her hunting trips, if you're going to risk your life doing something, best to look good doing it.

Damase sighed quietly. Well, he couldn't have everything he wanted and it wasn't like wearing lower garments would somehow impede his abilities –hopefully of course, who knew what could happen out in the horrifying lands of Wraeclast. So with a heavy sigh, he accepted defeat as any real man would.

"Alright," he put his hand up to stop her ranting, "allow me to go grab some armored leggings and we'll be on our way. Is that suitable?" He asked, hoping his solution would be acceptable to the rather loud ranger. He was rather certain of the answer when Kacela nodded with vigor and began pushing him back towards Tarkleigh.

"Something, just anything!"

One change of pants later –with only minimal groaning- and the two were back on their way to seeing the third member of their…well, it certainly wasn't a team just yet.

"I'm fine!" A sharp voice flew out from the small cottage they found themselves in front of. "Let go woman!" Damase tentatively opened the door, creaking it open ever so slightly, allowing him to simply peek inside.

"Argh!" The door flew open of its own volition, dragging him along with it. Damase stamped one foot forward to keep himself upright and steady. Seraphine, her torso still wrapped in bandages, tried to sprint past him, achieving the form of a gazelle with two broken legs, she quickly found herself stuck in the secure embrace of Kacela, who stared down at her with reprimanding eyes. Seraphine squirmed as she sought to escape Kacela's powerful grip.

"Exactly," Kacela strained out while she held the younger girl steady and began dragging her back into the cabin, "where do you think you're going?" She grunted when the girl kicked her legs out spastically, looking to leave her captivity. Kacela grinned at her tiny squeaks, she was surprisingly childish when it came to doctors it seemed.

Eventually the struggling stopped, tired legs hung lazily as they were carried back to their prison.

"Oh for the love of-" Nessa came bounding into the room, carrying various, rattling, bottles, each one filled with viscous liquids of different colors. Tutting at her as though she were a young child, Nessa grabbed Seraphine by the shoulders and dragged her onto a bed, with more than a little too much force. "I told you that you aren't ready to head out just yet!" Seraphine cringed when a finger poked her side, sending a bolt of pain run through her body. "Your body's still too injured."

She growled and clenched her teeth, grinding the enamel together in a dangerous fashion. "When WILL I be alright to head out?" Seraphine flinched when Nessa grabbed her side again.

"Five…no, at the very least six full weeks."

"I can't wait that long, I'll just have to heal as I-" She was stopped when Nessa's hands landed firmly on her shoulders, their eyes locked and Nessa gave her a powerful stare.

"No."

"But-"

"No."

"I'm-"

"No."

Kacela and Damase simply watched the exchange with slight mirth and morbid curiosity.

"Is there no way to expedite the healing process?" Damase interrupted suddenly. "Back in Oriath we had ways of healing these kinds of small injuries instantly, I believe it was called-"

"Divine Nectar, yes I know, but we don't have that here." She sharply intersected his thought process.

"Is Wraeclast truly devoid of any kind of healing nectar? Any at all?" He asked in earnest, taking a step forwards, pressing her for an answer.

"…Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why do you want to know so badly?" Nessa narrowed her eyes at him. Damase might have saved them from that monster Hillock -and for that she was eternally thankful- but that didn't mean she blindly trusted him now. She had run into far too many deceivers to do that anymore. "Why do you need her to be better so quickly?"

"I don't." He answered back simply, but Nessa's eyes stayed stony. "But, that child will head out there eventually, you can't tie her down here. It's best that she at least went with someone who could watch over her."

"I don't need-" Nessa smothered her words with a quick look, though her eyes softened almost immediately. The girl was a witch, but she was still just that, a young girl stuck in a terrible world. Maybe it was that _motherly instinct_ her parents had prattled on about for so long when she had first bled or maybe it was just her sense of duty to helping others who needed it, but either way, Nessa felt a sense of remorse for such a young girl having to spend her life in such a horrific situation like exile.

Damase wasn't wrong though, Seraphine seemed to have no intentions of staying behind and Damase was quite strong…

It left a bitter taste in her mouth, having to acknowledge Damase's reasoning.

"-aturgy." She mumbled out, eyes downcast.

"Pardon me?" Damase inquired.

"Thaumaturgy. The answer to almost everything out here in this sinned clad land. Thaumaturgy is the answer."

"I don't like the sound of that." Kacela said, biting her lips as she rubbed her hands together.

"You shouldn't, but it isn't the…worst option." Nessa agreed and looked to Damase with heavy eyes, her fingers clenched deeply into her hands. "In Wraeclast, a common tactic to…imitate Divine Nectar is to…to take blood, from any man or creature, stick it into a flask molded with certain virtue gems…and drink it." She took notice of Damase's disgusted look and mentally approved, it was certainly a reprehensible tactic…

But it worked damn well from what she had seen; wounds closing up almost instantly, blood replenished in full, eyes regenerating in their sockets, hell, she had seen entire limbs regrown with ease.

If Seraphine needed a quick fix, this…thaumaturgy was the definitive answer.

"Do you have any on you here?" Damase hesitantly asked, lips still twisted in disgust at the thought but…Seraphine looked at them from the corner of his eyes, her own pair filled with a small dying ember of hope.

"No." And dimmer that ember faded. "But, I think I know where you can find the tools to recreate them."

They smoldered, neither dying nor rising.

* * *

A wooden rod arced through the air, slicing through it deadly grace and precision, not even spinning, simply flying like a bird. It was like a painting being moved really, so still in its trajectory and-

 ***Thud***

"I'm at seventeen!"

"This isn't a contest Kacela."

"We already agreed it was!"

"No," Damase said as he slammed his new mace into the offending mouth of one who tried to bite him, "you came up with this ridiculous idea but I never agreed."

"I said silence was agreement!"

"That's ridiculous." He grunted, one foot slamming in front of him as he bent down, mace swinging low towards the ground as he twisted his body, dodging an incoming strike while supplying the necessary momentum to…

 ***Crunch***

"Sheesh, you could do it a bit less messily don'cha think?" Kacela coughed out as she eyed the exploded upper torso Damase had just pasted into the sand. These cannibals who inhabited the lands surrounding the fort were luckily terrible at fighting and seemed to rely more on swarm tactics than anything.

"I put my full effort into every fight, keeps me sharp, you should try it sometime." He nodded to her as they continued down the sandy beach.

Bestel had told them that his medical chest would have had the necessary components to create the healing flasks that they would need. His ship was, of course, wrecked at tidal island, a lengthy walk from Lioneye's Watch.

Bestel also told them how he had been run off from his ship and his crew when the locals had decided that the shipwrecked crew were a gift from the gods as a reward for their faith, truly a wonderful situation being presented before him.

Damase hadn't exactly been glad to hear that their required materials were now being guarded by a rather large group of cannibals but there really hadn't been any other choice, so with a groan he got going.

He eyed the woman walking beside him as she collected her arrows and some spares from the fallen corpses. Why Kacela had decided to come with him was still a mystery though he wasn't particularly worried about it, he was far stronger than her he was certain of that and, truth be told, he just didn't see her betraying him now of all times.

"So, why did you come along with me in the first place?" He asked her directly, no beating around the bush. Damase didn't play games with his questions like so many other people did –he found it a stupid practice that only ever lead to lies and deception. The game they always called it; the intrigue of politics with all of its flowery words and laced up propositions, all of which held his interest as much as a dying rat did.

Ask a man a question while pressing a mace into the back of his head though, and you got real answers.

"To help Sera." She replied, grunting as she tugged on a particularly embedded arrow. "What?" She turned her head to face him and threw him a sly grin. "Disappointed?" Her eyebrow wagged a tad as she teased him, though to her disappointment, Damase didn't seem to react much to her innuendo. Really all that changed was his lips thinning a slight bit more and he sighed another heavy, age laden sigh. It was bothersome to hear it come from him though, honestly it reminded her of her father and his tendency to lord his age and experience over her.

The two things she could never truly argue against.

"You know, I expected this to be a lot harder." She said mindlessly as an arrow slammed into the chest of another cannibal. Her torso twisted as she dodged a thrown stone, hands drew far apart, arms aligned in parallel, and another life was taken soon after as an arrow flew through the air. It was pathetic really, how easily they all seemed to die. "These guys are really un-URK!"

Damase tackled her as hard as he could, sending the two of them spiraling into the sand far away, her bow flew from her grip, left behind in her previous position. Fear, anger, and confusion swept through her mind as she slammed her palms onto Damase's chest, trying her best to remove him, but he was heavy and she was light.

The heat of his body pooled against her.

Then he moved, grabbing hold of her as he sprinted once again and she realized the heat wasn't from him.

Fireballs. Fireballs rained from the sky, slamming into their previous location with meteoric fury. The sand melted and twisted as the unbearable heat spread across like spilled water. Sand froze as the flaming rain ended, frozen craters of glass with their edges spooled and twisted together.

"What," Damase gulped cool, salty air, eager to ease the heat out from his lungs, "the hell was that?" He coughed out as he stayed behind the rock they had taken cover behind. He heard shouting and screaming, a banshee life voice which seemed to breathe life into several other voices, raising the yelling to thunderous levels.

"I should be asking you that!" Kacela hissed at him as she rubbed her sore chest and snarled. "You couldn't just tell me to move or something?"

"There was no time!" He growled right back, shoving his finger into her face. "You wouldn't have moved fast enough."

She nearly bit his finger off but instead chose to brush it out of the way roughly with her hand. Oh how she wanted to refute his claim and tell him how wrong he was, but she had far larger problems at the current moment. Like finding out where those fireballs had spawned from.

"Alright, alright, let's just focus on surviving this first before we have a go at each other, agreed?"

Damase nodded and crawled towards the edge of the rocks, intent on seeing what it was that had attacked them.

Kacela rolled her eyes and held him back, her finger coming up and wagging at him. She stalked to the corner of the rock

 _Well…You don't see that everyday..._

She wasn't particularly sure of what she was seeing. The cannibals were gathered together on a small, rocky plateau but didn't seem to be rushing them, in fact they weren't even facing them at all, choosing instead to face some savagely decorated women. She dipped back and leaned in close to Damase and whispered.

"They're just gathered around someone right now or something, lots of kneeling by the way."

He nodded and clenched his fist tightly around his mace, sweat dripped out of the cracks in his hand, plopping into the sand. Suddenly Kacela spoke up again, this time in a far more urgent voice.

"They're turning now. Facing us I think? The woman is...pointing at our rock. What the hell is she doing? Raising her han-" She was cut off by a thunderous war cry, followed by raucous sound of blood soaked feet stampeding through the sand.

Suddenly the air grew warm again.

Then hot.

Then searing.

They immediately jumped out of their position, narrowly dodging the cascade of fire that besieged their rock.

"Can you hit the fire witch from back here?!" Damase shouted as they ran towards along the shore, fire raining behind them, glassing the sand, cannibals swiftly closed in on them from the side as they leaped across the sand.

Instead of answering amidst the chaos, Kacela chose to instead draw her bow and twist towards the screeching banshee of a woman. Her fingers gripped the arrow delicately even as she drew it back with tremendous speed and strength –she aimed towards the right, feeling the wind battering against her as evidence. Her fingers expanded and feathers flew from her grip, wood trailed an arc through the sky and...

"You missed!" Damase shouted as he dodged a rock.

"You wanna try then?" She shouted back, nocking another arrow quickly and lining up another shot. The corner of her eye registered the horde closing in on them, one was foolish enough to run ahead of his little group and ended up having a one on one meeting with Damase's mace if the sheer amount of new gore covering Damase was anything to go by.

She ignored it however and loosed another arrow, this one sliced a cheek open and lead to another glass shattering screech.

The fire seemed to rain down even harder now.

"How long can she keep doing that!?"

"I don't know, it depends on how much mana she has." Damase grunted in response as he slipped past an overreaching blow and caved in a man's chest.

"I need a clear shot –high vantage point preferably, also no fire rain would be perfect." She pulled out her dagger, drove it deep into the neck of another man who had closed the distance, and with a snarl, tore it back out, letting a waterfall of blood cascade down his chest as he limply grasped at his torn throat.

"What about-" Damase searched for his words but couldn't find them, they had been replaced with the vacuum in his lungs courtesy of a cannibal driving a crude wooden club into his stomach. He skidded back through the sand, two trenches tracing the paths of his feet as he desperately tried to regain his breath. Such a stupid mistake he thought to himself, getting caught off guard like that.

He could see Kacela worriedly looking at him as the cannibals came bounding towards him, the world turned slowly though and he pointed towards a large pillar of stone beckoning her towards them. He slammed his mace into the floor and breathed.

In. Out.

The storm of footsteps drew closer.

In. Out.

The shouting grew louder.

In. Out.

The air heated up and a blue haze coated his body.

* * *

Kacela could only watch in horror as Damase dropped to one knee and seemingly gave up after having pointed her towards a vantage point. She broke though the line of cannibals in her way, most were focused on getting to Damase who seemed to be the easier prey now.

She watched as fire formed above him, she shouted for him to move, dodge, anything other than just kneel their and die like a dog.

But all she could hear though was the wailing of the cannibals as they burned and the sound of roaring flame. Flesh melted like butter and dripped off bone, hair disintegrated to wispy smoke and eyeballs boiled in their sockets.

"Damase..." They hadn't been particularly close but he had been the only other calm voice in this sea of calamity and losing him made her chest wrench more than she liked to admit –she could see them being strong friends had time allowed it. She shook herself of these thoughts and continued running towards the pillars of stone, there wasn't too much time left now that the cannibals seemed to be gathering themselves from the shock.

Her flesh felt like stone as she stood atop the outcrop; each movement weighed like having to push through thick syrup.

She locked eyes with the fire witch, her vision tunneling as she phased out all other stimuli, focusing solely on the other woman.

One raised a set of hands while the other a bow.

One screeched loudly into the sky while the other nocked an arrow.

Kacela felt the back of her neck heat up as heat gathered above her like thunderclouds made of fire.

She let her arrow fly.

Her heart sank deep into her stomach as she watched it miss.

* * *

Stinging, like rusted steel running into his nostrils, blood tracing the deep cuts that trailed into his lungs with every breath.

 _So this is what hell smells like?_ Damase thought to himself as he lay face up in a glassy circle, his armor charred, edges frayed black and burnt. The aroma of bitter ash filled his lungs courtesy of the bodies –though you really couldn't tell what they were just by looking at them now- surrounding him. Agonizing cries surrounded him from some of the cannibals who had only been clipped by the blasts –they had the fortune, or misfortune he supposed, of only having some limbs blasted off and a varying degree of flesh burnt off.

The moans of the tortured that wormed around and enveloped him, the same sounds of grueling and agony filled death, these were the sounds that filled him with life and made him open his eyes.

 _I don't think any version of hell involves little women with bows climbing rocks..._ He noted as he slowly rose off the floor, his knees shook from the effort but he made his way up, the cannibals were still dazed as well it seemed, a fair number had fallen to the fires and were only now just recovering. He groped around for his mace, eyes steadying onto the figure a small ways away from him; the fire witch.

"Alright then." He breathed out, then in again, allowing the cool breeze to fill his lungs and clear his mind. With a mighty push, Damase stampeded off, intent on having a close up meeting with the witch.

Damase ran, bashing through unsuspecting flesh as he thundered towards his target, steel in his hands turning into a blur as he tore through.

The fire witch roared, hands raised high as she called down fire.

"Ah!" She screeched long and loud into the sky, her fingers played out and reaching for whatever God she believed lay up there in the sky. Damase drew up behind her, mace gripped tightly in his fingers, steel shining brightly as he coated it in mana.

"Argh!" Damase roared as he swung his mace as hard as he could. He felt air slice past him but he paid it no mind.

* * *

By all the gods in the skies, and the demons below, she had missed her one opportunity and now she was going to burn.

"Guess I'll be seeing you sooner than I thought mother." She prayed quietly, eyes closed as she waited for the flames to take her away. Seconds rolled by in anguish as she felt her skin prickle at the cool sensation licking across her frame.

 _Wait..._

She forced her eyelids apart and took another glance at the world around her. Still horrible as always, with all the burning corpses she could ever want, but the fire itself was missing. The dreadful heat taken away like a storm beat against the side of a mountain.

Her eyes searched for the witch again, flicking back to her last known location, only to see...

"Holy shit..." Damase, soot covered and fire-licked, was next to the fire witch, his mace planted firmly into her knee, bending it at a grotesque angle. Her shrieks were carried across the tides of the wind to Kacela's own ears –a great symphony that she couldn't help but sadistically enjoy. "You absolute crazy bastard..."

She could see him roar as he tore the mace out of her leg, toppling her to the floor as she swung her hands out wide, trying desperately to push him away. She wasn't strong enough however, Damase lifted his mace up high, and with a roar, he swung it back down.

Kacela was too far to hear the scene, but she could imagine the sound of bone splintering with a horrid shudder, the soft squish as the hard metal bit deep into the fleshy face of the fire witch, flattening it out irregularly.

Gruesome image it was.

But she was fond of it at the moment.

* * *

 **A/N: That ends chapter 5, kind of short I know but at least it's an update right!**

 **Right?**

 **Hello?**

 **Anyone here still reading?**

 **Either way though, next update by:**

 **November 4, 2016**

 **See ya then!**


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: Here's chapter six for all of you! Writing this story is pretty fun as I've come to find. Since there's already a bit of a trail to follow the story itself isn't too difficult to write out.**

 **Turns out this is a day late! I thought the 4** **th** **was supposed to be on a Saturday but I guess I was wrong! Sorry about that!**

* * *

Chapter 6

* * *

Salty air wrapped around him, rubbing against his skin and wicking away the moisture. Damase's chest rose and fell rhythmically as he wrenched his mace up and away from the crimson pile of splintered bone and drying blood.

 _Still intact, good craftsmanship._ Sure, it was a far cry from some of the more unique weapons that some Templar held back in Oriath but it was holding itself together nicely, and considering how hard he had been smacking it around he was surprised that it hadn't shattered in his grasp like the last mace. Standing up to full height, Damase watched the cannibals disperse, having lost their confidence with the death of their leader. They sprinted into dark alcoves, toppling over each other as they raced to their safe havens in haste –some were crushed underfoot it seemed.

Looking across the sands he could see Kacela, standing on top of her spire, waving to him gleefully. Relief flooded his body –sure, he had spotted her earlier but seeing her wave let him know she was relatively unhurt. He lifted an arm to wave, the effort felt like having to lift an anvil after spending hours with the hammer, so he just barely managed a pathetic single motion which he hoped could be interpreted as a wave.

It looked more like someone dismissing a particularly unruly child.

Hopefully Kacela wouldn't take it that way.

* * *

"So what was with the whole..." Kacela threw her shoulder and let her arm flop lazily around at him, Cheshire grin stretching from ear to ear. "Is your arm broken?"

Damase just lifted his arm in response, clenching his fist multiple times while ignoring her. His muscles were still screaming at him in protest at the action, but he ignored it –Templars were put taught to push through any and all physical barriers which may impede their holy mission. Though, this wasn't always a positive attitude to have now that he thought about it.

Plenty of Templar ended up with...disabilities due to their stubbornness.

"It's fine."

"Oh, fine is it?" He could hear her feet shuffle rapidly through the sand, the sleeves of her shirt rumpling at they moved. "Ha!" She shouted triumphantly, one hand shooting to his arm, intent clear as day.

Damase made a sudden stop, allowing her open hand to pass right in front of him. He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and _twisted_ pulling the girl to the floor in an awkward position, her arm firmly locked behind her back as he continued pulling up.

"Like I said." He leaned over her shoulder, allowing his lips to curl into a smile that showed plenty of teeth –he learned this unnatural look from his teacher. "It's fine."

She collapsed into the sand, a rueful look falling on her face she rubbed her wrist. He could _feel_ her glare as he walked past her into the shallows, his own eyes tracing the watery path to a small island in the distance.

Tidal Island.

"Hey," Her hand landed on his shoulder, pulling slightly as she caught up next to him. "I didn't really say it earlier, but thanks." When he just cocked his head in confusion, she sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "For saving me."

He didn't really know what to say to that aside from a gruff, "you're welcome." Did saving people come with a thanks now? Back in Oriath, he hadn't been thanked a lick for all of his duties –a Templar's holy mission is a thankless job they had told him. He had been cursed at, spat on, and usually worse in his line of duty over the years and the only reward he was ever given was a reprimand from High Templar Dominus in person –the reward was that it was slightly less harsh than usual.

"So, you think there's gonna be any more trouble at the island?" She chirped after a few seconds of silence, her hands linked behind her head.

Damase blanched at her line of questioning. Nothing good ever came out of someone asking whether it could get any worse in life. The quick answer was yes, yes it can. The long answer? Yes, and more than likely in a tragically terrible way.

"At the least, the Island will have more cannibals and probably someone leading them." Of course, this was all speculation, but Damase had a keen eye for trouble, probably since he was known for getting himself into quite a bit of it. "So be ready for another fight."

"Really? After Lady-Melts-The-Sand I think I've had my fill of fire breathing maniacs." Her cheerful demeanor only made it worse, it was like she was trying to attract some bad luck.

Looking out into the distance, he could see water splash across distance rocks, spraying foam into the air.

"We'll see what happens when we get there." An ominous reply, but fitting for the situation.

Who knew what kinds of horrors they would face.

* * *

 _Drenched clothes, rusty jewelry, and...more wet clothes._ Kacela sighed as she dug through the ships innards, pulling out worthless trinkets and fabrics as she searched for a medical box. She heard a loud grunt to her left and turned to see Damase lifting a large wooden beam off the water logged floor of the ship they were currently inside.

See, Bestel told them of how he had crashed on Tidal Island and left his medical chest behind –he left the crew as well apparently- but he had neglected to tell them _which_ ship in particular belonged to him.

So here they were, stuck searching through ship after ship after ship...

Turns out Tidal Island was a quite the popular area for unlucky or just plain bad navigators judging by the sheer number of shipwrecks.

Kacela peeked out, emerging from the gaping hole that marred the nameless ship's hull.

Lots of sand and rocks, Tidal Island had a certain aesthetic to it, not one that fit her style of course, but it was certainly nice in its own way...well...it would if it weren't for the random cannibals who still chose to hang out in the rocky outcrop, prowling for more marooned ships.

She steadily nocked an arrow.

 ***thwok***

"And another one goes down." She quietly murmured to herself, gathering herself together and running over to retriever her arrow.

"You find anything!?" She head Damase shout after her, emerging from another hole in the ship, his clothes clinging to his muscled frame tightly.

She shook her head. "No! Next ship?" She really didn't want to but they didn't have much time left till the dark of the night overtook them, and being stuck here past the daylight didn't seem like a pleasant idea. Her back arched as she stretched, her chest pushing forwards and her head nodding back.

Damase ran over to her, nodding as he pointed to another ship in the distance, large and...well, she wanted to say imposing but the massive seagull didn't exactly make for a particularly frightening image.

"Who do you think chose the figurehead for that one?" She asked Damase, smirking at him like a cat as she ribbed him lightly, taking extra care to miss his more grievous wounds.

He grimaced slightly. "Not sure but it's certainly...unique in design."

"Yeah..." She felt her lips quirk, "You think plastering the seagull head onto the body of a naked woman was the plan A or plan B?"

"The fact that it could have been either is what's frightening." He surmised, stepping forwards in the sand.

Kacela laughed, her head thrown back as she smiled into the sky. Damase seemed to be a bit more relaxed now that the action had finally died off, his muscles weren't tensed like a bow string anymore and his eyes weren't busy darting left and right for various dangers.

She had even seen him smile once or twice properly!

"So," she sidled up next to him as they moved, "how _did_ you survive the fire?" She knew about magic but she had never heard of or seen a spell that could allow someone to take such a brutal attack and come out relatively unscathed. That fire had **melted** the sand and whatever unlucky cannibals had gotten caught in the blast, she couldn't fathom a man simply walking through that with impunity.

"Shielding." He raised his fist to accentuate his point. She watched, mesmerized as a blue hue slowly covered the flesh. It seemed so...weak. It was wispy like mist and didn't look particularly strong at all, that such a thing could protect from such dangers...

 _I've gotta learn how to do that sometime._ The thought sprang into her mind immediately. "What makes it so strong?" She asked, stretching out a hand and gripping his fingers between her own. Putting pressure on it seemed to harden it, becoming impassable when her fingers danced right above the surface of his skin.

"Mind and spirit. The stronger your spirit is and the better you can visualize it in your mind, the stronger and sturdier the shield becomes." He recited it like a textbook, the words flowing easily together.

"Sounds like a church thing!" She yipped, definitely not her decanter of spirit whatsoever. Church never could appeal to her, far too restricting and the benefits just didn't seem to outweigh the cons. Stuck in worship all the time with no fun seemed like a bad way to waste someone's life, in her opinion of course, some people enjoyed that kind of thing. Just not her.

"It is indeed _a church thing_." Luckily he didn't seem all too offended by her statement, simply taking the small jab in stride. "Are you prepared for another rousing search?" She wanted to laugh at his grimace, it stretched across his face and down his neck into the rest of his body. She wanted to...but the prospect of having to search through the gargantuan ship had sapped all the humor out of her.

So she just nodded and sighed, slinging her bow away once again.

* * *

"Damase!" He whipped his head around to Kacela, mace already in hand as he bent at his knees, ready to leap and slam whatever trouble had befallen...

"..."

"Damase!" She said again, this time with palpable excitement and no shrieking.

"..."

"I found you some more plate mail pants you can wear!" She held up the full steel armor leggings at him, her body visibly vibrating with pride.

"It's rusting..."

"But pants!"

"It has a hole busted through it..."

"But pants!"

"Kacela, I already have pants..."

"Yeah, but these would match breastplate better!"

"Ugh..." A heavy sigh laden with disappointment crawled out his lungs. Damase turned around to continue his search.

He ignored the voice behind him egging him on to try on his 'great new pair of pants.'

"Ignoring your obsession with my garments," she cried out in indignation and denial, "have you found anything yet?" A quick shake of her head and Damase groaned like an aged chair sat on by a particularly rotund clergyman.

 ***Thump***

They froze in place, immediately drawing their weapons again. Damase closed his eyes and steadied his breathing, focusing everything into his sense of hearing, listening for every minute noise that penetrated his ear drums. Several seconds passed by with nothing but the sound of the sea splashing against wood and the skittering of small rodents and birds. They relaxed slowly, weapons lowering slightly as Damase signaled to Kacela with one hand, gesturing towards the exit –a hole carved into the hull of the ship, probably from the rocks it had crashed against.

She just nodded, one foot silently sliding forwards in front of the other as she headed to the exit, allowing Damase to take point first.

They worked slowly, feet shuffling silently forwards. When Damase reached the exit he pulled up against the wood and peaked out slowly, searching for any unseen threats. He signaled with an open palm and took a step out into the open sand, Kacela following after him but facing the ship instead, watching carefully.

After a period of grueling silence, Damase finally lowered his guard.

"Well, that was-"

 ***THUMP***

His head shot upwards to the deck of the ship immediately. Leaning over the cracked railing was a man wielding a rudimentary wooden club, his lips pulled back to show two rows of yellowed teeth as he let loose a guttural growl. He was shirtless but blood covered his torso like paint, his pants were sprayed with crimson as well –a testament, Damase assumed, to his disposition. Damase watched as the man's back arched unnaturally far, his arm reaching behind him to the sea. The man's eyes opened wide as he swallowed a deep breath of salty air.

Damase grabbed Kacela and threw her backwards into sand before raising his in front of him.

" **ARGH!** " The man roared, slamming the club forward into the railing, shattering it like ice, splinters flying into Damase but luckily finding no purchase. Damase watched him leap from the deck, his club raised high above his head.

Damase barely brought up his mace in time to block the vicious blow. He felt a chill surround his body suddenly, biting deep past his skin and into his bones.

"Ack!" Damase flew backwards past Kacela, tumbling head over feet before slamming into the sand, spraying particulate into the air as he continued to skid, his body digging a deep trench before he slammed into a rocky pillar.

His knees trembled like thin willows as he stood back up, using his mace to support him.

"Ice...?" He whispered, staring at the massive spikes of ice that currently occupied the space in front of the man. Large and imposing, they sprouted like thorns from the sand, clear like crystal with mist swirling around them. "How did-" He didn't have time to finish his thoughts as the man reared back again, his head facing the blue sky.

" **AH!** " His shrill war cry filled the air, shattering the cold glass in front of him. The man bent his legs and sprinted forwards again, club raised his.

Damase rushed forwards as well, intent on meeting him head on. He shoved Kacela back as he passed her, shouting quickly to her, "Shoot him!"

He could barely make out her form, straight back with her bow drawn.

He could barely see the man rushing in front of him, eyes cold and dark.

He could barely see the club swinging down towards his head.

But despite all the things he couldn't see, Damase very clearly saw the ice erupt from the sand like stalagmites in a cave.

It hit him anyways.

* * *

 **A/N: There you go! Chapter 6 for you all! Hope you enjoy!**

 **Next Chapter: November 18** **th**


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

* * *

A rush of air span around him as he ducked and weaved through a deadly maze of ice. Damase slammed one foot into the floor, throwing his shoulder into a pane of ice and shattering it like glass, blasting through to his target.

" **Ah!** " He bellowed, swinging his mace from below, dragging it through the sand easily. It arced into the sky, a trail of particles following in its wake as it slammed home.

 ***CRACK***

At first, Damase thought he had broken the man's chest but a quick inspection showed that his blow had slammed into some ice shield and barely shattered it. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise immediately, prompting him to quickly dislodge his weapon while simultaneously rolling to the right, barely slipping past a thundering wooden club.

As his roll ended, Damase used the momentum to rise up to his feet and, spinning around to face the frozen man once more. He was immediately pushed back once again as he parried three quick blows to his head, each one narrowly blocked and thankfully not spawning any errant icicles.

*Whack*

*Whack*

*Whack*

Out the corner of his eye he could see Kacela desperately launching arrow after arrow in a futile attempt to slow the barrage of blows.

This was quickly looking impossible to win...

Hillock had been stronger, absolutely, and the fire witch had been far more difficult to even approach, but this new threat...

How the hell could they fight someone who couldn't be harmed? The ice shield that covered him from head to toe was only three inches thick but felt tougher than steel and seemed to absorb the strength of his blows like ceramic plating.

"Watch out!" At Kacela's warning, Damase _moved_. Throwing himself out the way, left or right didn't really matter at this point. Behind him another field of ice flowed out from the sand, spiking into the air.

And that was the second problem...

Damase had seen men use virtue gems before, bringing forth incredible, heretic powers that were deemed forbidden by the council and punishable by death at the noose. Of course, Templars were instructed a bit differently, High Templar Damase had been very keen on _loosening_ old traditions, speaking of a changing world and a desire to match its ever evolving dangers. He shook old thoughts from his mind again when he heard the human icicle roar and leap into the air, raising his club high behind his head.

Damase easily rolled out of the way again.

He was faster than this new foe.

He was more skilled than this new foe.

But most importantly, Damase was smarter.

Time seemed to slow as he _thought_. His brain firing off as he examined everything around him and about the situation. He could break through that ice shielding, he already had evidence of that, though it wouldn't do too much damage to the body itself and the shielding would replace itself after roughly 15 seconds. That meant whatever plan he came up with would have to be a fast one, relying on shattering through and getting an attack in while the ice was weak.

Moreover, he couldn't just sit there and exchange as many blows as possible, trying to overpower his ice shield since every time Damase would start overpowering him in blows he would start slamming his club into the ground to gain some distance and let his shield rebuild.

No...he couldn't win this by fighting like a Templar, strong and weighty like a boulder. No...

He panned his eyes to Kacela.

They would need to adopt a different style.

"Hold your arrows!" He shouted, nodding to her as he locked weapons with the man, pushing against him with all his might. Damase could feel himself gaining ground as he stepped forwards, threw the man's club to the side, and in a single fluid motion, swung his mace back to his head, rocking it like a basket of cherries.

The damage seemed negligible but it gave him the opportunity to run past him, slipping through his guard like water. He sprinted to Kacela where he grabbed her and continued running, heading to the rocky outcrop.

"You have a plan?" She asked him in a breathless voice, exhaustion easily edging its way through.

"Aye, but it's going to be a bit complex." Damase gestured to a field of stalactites, tall rocky columns jutting out from the sand, each one far taller than a man. A small forest of stone it seemed. "We're going to be taking a strategy form your people, the rangers."

She looked back at him, then back at the stone forest. A small but viscous grin slowly appeared on her face as the words began to click together. "Hit and run."

"Exactly."

In the next few minutes, they disappeared into the stone, leaving behind one cautious man of ice.

* * *

A man lumbered carefully, his feet sliding and shifting through the sands as he snarled and snapped at every movement. His club swung idly next to him, ready to splatter a man's skull open like a watermelon. He hunched over, sniffing the air, though it wasn't going to be doing him any good, humans weren't dogs after all.

He whipped around at the pattering of footsteps, his face twisting in rage as he swung his club out, roaring loudly and confidently. A mass of warm, tasty flesh ducked under his blow. If he still had the mental capacity to, he probably would have scoffed, after all, another close encounter would end just like all the others, a dead man ready to be eaten.

Except, this man was _fast._ So fast, unlike the rest. His body flowed like water and he had a hard time keeping up. He was like a rabbit. He remembered rabbits still, even through this death-in-life he remembered. They were his least favorite animal. So difficult to catch. So difficult to hunt. He would call this man rabbit-man. That seemed appro-

 ***CRACK***

His knee nearly buckled under the blow, ice shattering once again, but holding on just enough to protect his body. His fragile little body, aged and dying, kept fresh with blood and cold.

When he swung his mace down, he expected the man to spin away and run, but instead the rabbit-man rose up to the challenge, swinging his shiny club upwards. Did he want to match him? No one matched him! He was Hailrake! He was unbeatable.

Rabbit-man didn't even bother blocking his attack, which was obvious, no one could defeat Hailrake in combat, instead choosing to run right past him. Away and away, Hailrake watched him run back past a big rock.

*Whack*

As he turned his body though, looking to make chase, he _felt_.

It was vertigo.

When he tried to take a step forwards, he found himself stumbling forwards, face meeting the ground. It reminded him of his childhood, marred by his father who would berate him for his constant failures. Just a boy who was born sickly with no future. A failure. Without a single groan he peered down as he _felt_.

It was warm.

Blood seeped out of his leg, a wooden shaft buried in his knee, crunching bone and splitting tendons. It had been so long since he had seen his own blood, felt its warmth. His father had been the first one to teach him of that warmth. The kind of warmth that burned like searing hot iron against his flesh, dragging the screams out of his mouth as leather _scraped_ across his back in thick trenches. Even through that warmth though, he still _felt_.

It was anger.

A red, hot, fiery anger that erupted into his chest, filling his iced heart with a burst of emotion again. This wasn't wrath, unguided at the world and cold to passion. It was anger, burning him up at his core like the first –and subsequently last- time he had risen up against his father, grabbing his skull and smashing it into the floor, biting his neck and feasting on the blood that poured out. He roared with all his anger as he spotted a woman with a bow. He swung his club into the floor at her savagely, ramming it into the sands and sending a cascade of glaciers to her. But she hid behind another rock and his ice crashed against it uselessly. When he heard another roar behind him, followed by the telltale sound of thundering footsteps, he _felt_.

It was fear.

He saw it coming for him. The helplessness. He still remembered the fear it seemed, how it gnawed at him from the edges of his mind, slowly filling his vision, a creeping and seeping bleakness. Like when the council deemed him a monster, an atrocity, a _failure_ of a human and declared him an exile to die –a fate worse than death. Like when he was thrown onto that rickety old boat, sent away into raging seas for judgement, for _death._ Like when that same ship crashed into a small island, sending him tumbling into the sands, only to be picked up by a prowling pack of men and women, looking for a feast. All these feelings culminating into a terror so deep it had never left his mind, even when he found a family in a group of cannibals, even when he discovered the strength in thaumaturgy, and even when he lost his mind completely.

He could hear the thundering of steps now as the rabbit-man closed in on him. Hailrake turned and tried to rise up to his feet, stumbling when his knee caved in, no amount of arctic armor would hold it up now. He felt a wave of fear wash over him as the rabbit-man closed the distance, his mace held up high. Hailrake screeched as he kneeled on the floor, his hands held up to his face as a meager protection.

 ***CRACK***

The air in his lungs exploded through his lips in a hacking cough as he was thrown backwards. He was facing the darkening sky now, watching as the last swathes of light were slowly stripped away.

*Whack*

"Augh..." He groaned and simply looked down, a shaft of wood protruded out of his chest.

Funny, he didn't feel so afraid now. The warmth was gone as well, replaced with a more comfortable cold. A cold that he had always sought but never found.

A cold that could end the warmth.

* * *

"Well, that wasn't too bad." Kacela panted out, tugging on her lodged arrow. "Seems like he gave up at the end there though."

"Tired? Maybe he hit his limit." Damase tried to rationalize it but wasn't too satisfied with the answer. Regardless though, he was dead, and they were fine -no need to ruminate on the mind of a dead man, he thought to himself. "We still have to find the medicine chest." He appended, looking back over to the liege of stranded boats that awaited them. The thought of having to sift through more wreckage AND trudge back to the watch made him deliberate on the idea of simply abandoning Seraphine.

 _She could just heal slowly..._ His traitorous mind immediately supplied. He wrestled the thought and gave it a gruesome death, berating himself for lacking constitution.

"C'mon...We're bleeding daylight." Kacela yanked him with her as she didn't so much speak as she did audibly despair.

"Ugh..." Damase didn't want to groan, groaning wasn't befitting for a man of God, but groan he did.

Hopefully this wouldn't take too much longer.

* * *

By the time they found their medicine chest, it had grown dark across Wraeclast. The night was lit dimly by the shining moon and small spotty stars which made it difficult to find their way back but they persisted, taking it slowly and wading through the dark waters carefully, avoiding or killing the errant undead who spawned out the water.

Kacela had no clue if there was a spell or miracle that allowed Templars to see at night, but she was rapidly starting to pray that Damase would come up with one. Their slow pace was taking its toll on her and the added silence wasn't helping on bit. They were getting closer to the mainland though, which eased her mind a bit since it would be easier to walk across dry sand than water. She peered, narrowing her eyes to the shoreline, pausing when a flicker caught her eye.

"Damase!" Kacela hissed to her companion, gripping his shoulder. "Torch lights! The shoreline! Look." She pointed a slender finger over to the small, barely visible, flickering orbs of light that dotted the coast. It had to be the cannibals. Waiting. Watching. Damase voiced her thoughts aloud.

"Cannibals, but how did they know we were coming back?" Kacela didn't really have an answer, and to be honest, she didn't care to look for when at the moment. These cannibals were in the way of a comfortable bed and some long deserved rest.

"Can we sneak past?" She already knew the answer but was hoping Damase would propose a plan to get by them easily without much work.

Those hopes crashed like the ships of Tidal Island when he shook his head and sighed.

"Too many, we might need to fight our way through again."

"Oh fucking lord...what if they have another fire bitch..." She would have to kill herself. That was the only clear answer. There was no way she had the energy to go through another fight like that and Damase had done even more work than her! There was no way he was feeling up to the task. "Maybe they're friendly now?"

"Friendly after we killed what seemed to be their leader?"

"Maybe that means we become the new leaders?"

"I'd rather not become the new leader for a cannibal tribe."

She didn't really want that either. At this point Kacela was just throwing out whatever answer she could find, praying for some sort of divine presence to open up a new pathway for them. Nothing happened of course and the two of them looked to each other, sighed, and pulled out their weapons. Damase a bit more carefully since he still had the chest strapped to his back.

"Let's just try and get this over with as fast as possible. It shouldn't be too far from the watch, and once we get close the cannibals aren't likely to follow us." If that was Damase's attempt at cheering her up, then he needed some lessons in cheerfulness. All that had done was let Kacela know that this was going to be an insane amount of work. But they trudged onwards, through the grime of wet, their weapons in hand. Ready for anything.

Step by step they drew closer, expecting any moment for the cannibals to finally notice them and being roaring and screaming into action.

Nothing came however.

Silence reigned across the shore.

"D-Do you think they haven't noticed us yet?" Her worried voice betrayed her attempts to stay calm. The cannibals were supposed to be mindless, that's what made them so simple to fight, seeing them like this...

What if they had some plan now?

"No, they can clearly see us Kacela..." His voice was low and he was crouched now, compensating for the weight on his back as he stared forwards. She tracked his eyes, only to be met with the snarling face of a cannibal peeking from the edge of a small cliff, torch barely illuminating his painted face. He snapped his lips open and closed, teeth clacking together as he nudged his head to his right. Another face appeared over the edge, just as twitchy. It stared at them as well before turning away, taking both faces away somewhere else.

"They must have some plan." She quickly figured, hastily nocking an arrow. "Luring us in for an ambush maybe."

"Maybe..." She watched Damase's face _twist_. It went from being worried to thoughtful to confused back to worried in the span of a single second. In any other situation she would have teased him, but now seemed like a suboptimal time. Suddenly he froze, his ears twitching as he caught some sound and began _listening_.

She followed along, trying her best to catch...

Swishing and sloshing waters...

Behind them...

She turned with Damase to face the sea.

"What in the name of God..." Damase had voiced her exact thoughts though he had less expletives.

Women rose from the depths of the sea onto the shore. Except, they weren't fully women. They just had the form of one, as though God had taken the mold of a woman and filled it with _everything_ else he could. A mangled form that was equal parts crab, octopus, and seaweed. All of it glued together and walking towards the shore line, water trailing behind it, flowing out from the sea and into their forms like it was some bastardized umbilical cord.

She could barely register Damase's voice when the screaming started. A hundred voices rising up behind her as the cannibals appeared from behind the cliffs and the rocks, stampeding into the shore armed with blades, clubs, slings, and bows. All she could see was two armies of the damned coming together, ready to smash into each other.

With them in the middle.

"-la! Kacela!" Damase's voice finally hit her ears and she was flung back into reality, quite literally with how he grabbed her and started sprinting.

She stumbled for a moment before catching herself.

"I-I..." She searched for words but they kept on stopping short, her brain struggling to keep up with the _everything_ that was this situation. She had never seen a large battle like this before, rangers never got involved in conflicts like this. They were never in the middle of them. It was insane! How did people ever survive!? They wouldn't. That was clear to-

"Just follow me!" Damase didn't so much as shout at her as he did through her, the words barely processing as she numbly sprinted with him.

The thundering sound of a million footsteps on both sides were all she could hear now.

* * *

 **A/N:**

 **Next Chapter: December 2**


End file.
